Oral Answers to Questions

CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Analogue Spectrum

Derek Wyatt: What estimate she has made of the value of the analogue spectrum once digital switchover has been completed.

Tessa Jowell: At this stage, it is not possible to make any reliable assumption of the market value or potential auction proceeds of the spectrum released by digital switchover.

Derek Wyatt: It is difficult to estimate that value—some advisers estimate £2 billion, while others estimate £5 billion. If the value is between £2 billion and £5 billion, can we give some of that money to some of Britain's 12 million old-age pensioners, some of whom will not be able to afford the cost of switchover? Under current plans, subsidies will be provided only to over-75s on pension credit. Even if the figure is as low as £2 billion, can some of it be used to help our pensioners with the cost of switchover?

Tessa Jowell: My hon. Friend knows that we have announced a package of help, which will be funded by the BBC as part of the new licence fee settlement that will be negotiated shortly—since the cost is a broadcasting cost, that is how we expect it to be met. One of the most important principles in ensuring that digital switchover takes place properly is making sure   that free-to-air access to television is available to   everyone. Without special help, which we have proposed, some people risk being left behind, but we will not allow that to happen.

Julie Kirkbride: What representations has the Secretary of State made to the Chancellor about allowing some of the bandwidth that will become available following analogue switch-off to go to terrestrial channels in order to allow the country to view high-definition television? She will be aware that some countries already have high-definition TV, and when we host the Olympics in 2012, it is vital that everybody in the United Kingdom who is watching terrestrial channels can see the glory of London and, hopefully, of our athletes on high-definition television.

Tessa Jowell: I take the hon. Lady's point, but the policy is clear: spectrum released by switchover will be sold in the marketplace in a technology-neutral auction. Ofcom, which would oversee such an auction, will take account of the needs of broadcasters at that time for the precise reason that the hon. Lady has outlined.

Hugo Swire: May I take this opportunity to wish the Secretary of State, her team and officials in the Department a merry Christmas? Before we suspend hostilities completely and start playing football across the Floor of the House, however, does the right hon. Lady agree with the review of the BBC's royal charter by the House of Lords, which states:
	"we do not believe that the costs of promoting and co-ordinating digital switchover and providing targeted help for the vulnerable and disadvantaged should fall on the licence fee payer"?

Tessa Jowell: In a similar spirit, may I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Front Bench and wish him and his team a happy Christmas? We will resume Dispatch Box hostilities in the new year. We agree with a number   of the recommendations in the House of Lords report and will take them into account as we finalise the   White Paper on the BBC's charter. However, the recommendation that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned is not one of those that I accept. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt), wherever the costs of switchover fall, they are broadcasting costs, which should be met by the broadcasters and ultimately through the licence fee.

Don Foster: I, too, wish the Secretary of State and her team a happy Christmas, but she is being complacent about high-definition television. I   discussed the issue today with the industry body, Intellect, which told me that high-definition televisions are so popular this Christmas that suppliers cannot meet demand. High-definition televisions use 50 per cent. more of the spectrum than ordinary television sets. Will the Secretary of State assure people who have bought high-definition televisions this Christmas that they will have access to the additional spectrum they need to make use of their Christmas purchases?

Tessa Jowell: There is no question of anybody who buys a high-definition television this Christmas being unable to use it because of a subsequent decision on the allocation of spectrum taken by Ofcom implicitly as an   expression of Government policy. An absolutely consistent part of our approach to moving from analogue to digital has been that decisions on the allocation of the spectrum released by the switchover will be taken at the time—between 2008 and 2010. As was well captured in the debates in both Houses on the Communications Act 2003, we have taken that approach because of the pace of technological advance and the importance of ensuring that consumers have the benefit of keeping up with it. Who pays for the spectrum is a much more significant issue than what it is used for.

Media Workers (Employment Rights)

Hywel Williams: What recent discussions she has had with the Department of Trade and Industry regarding the employment rights of media workers.

David Lammy: There have been no recent discussions between the Secretary of State and the Department of Trade and Industry regarding the employment rights of media workers.

Hywel Williams: Given the increased casualisation of media employment, does the Minister concede that there is a danger to employment rights, particularly in smaller-scale broadcast organisations in areas such as mine in north-west Wales? Does he therefore agree that there is a duty on the BBC to ensure that employee rights are guaranteed when it awards contracts?

David Lammy: Those matters must rightly be for the BBC governors. The hon. Gentleman will note that the   BBC had hoped not to make compulsory redundancies in the course of its restructuring, and we share its regret that it has to make some. It is important to note that as part of that exercise, the BBC is hoping to invest in and to increase programming across the regions. That should benefit Wales and, indeed, small production companies.

Jim Sheridan: My hon. Friend will be aware of the recently announced enforced redundancies by Trinity Mirror. Employees and consumers are extremely worried about   that, particularly as regards papers such as the Daily Record, which is recognised as a national paper for Scotland. The service that it provides may be diluted so that it is no longer a national but a regional newspaper.

David Lammy: I can imagine that that is a great concern in Scotland, but such matters must rightly be for the management of Trinity Mirror. One hopes that the   investment and support that is being provided for the wider economy means that people will find alternative employment.

Licensing Act 2003

Adrian Bailey: What assessment she has made of the impact of the Licensing Act 2003.

James Purnell: It is too early fully to measure the implications yet, but the early signs   are positive. Police and ambulance services are not reporting increases in alcohol-related crime or accidents. We will closely monitor the impact of the Act over the coming months and report back to Parliament.

Adrian Bailey: I thank my hon. Friend for his reply. Does he share my satisfaction that the measures taken so far seem to have been successful in empowering local communities to control licensing and drinking behaviour in their areas? Does he agree that the long-term future of the policy must lie in ensuring that local communities understand and use their powers so that we can get the best of both worlds—a more consumer-friendly drinking regime and commitment to law and order in stable communities?

James Purnell: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. The central principle of the Act was to give local communities the right to make decisions about their local premises. It is too early to judge the Act—we have always said that we would not do so overnight—but we will look very closely at the evidence. We will want to see, for example, a reduction in the level of failed test purchases in selling to minors, more responsibility from the trade, and very serious measures taken by local authorities and the police against the minority who continue to behave in an irresponsible manner.

Philip Hollobone: Having spent Friday night out on patrol with the local police in my constituency, may I tell the Minister that the evidence from Kettering is that there has been an increase in the number of people arrested since the new measures were introduced?

James Purnell: As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have introduced an alcohol misuse enforcement campaign that is doing exactly that. It is targeting people who have been misbehaving under the previous legislation, and it is only because of the tough new powers in the Act that that campaign is the toughest one that we have ever had.

Kevan Jones: Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the licensing officers and local councillors who have worked very hard to implement the Act? Will he also recognise that the Armageddon that some predicted would result from the implementation of the Act has not occurred?

James Purnell: I do want to join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to everybody involved in implementing the Act. A huge amount of work has been done by licensing officials and councillors in ensuring that it was brought forward in good order. In particular, they did a huge amount of work over the summer to raise the level of applications, and we pay tribute to them, the Local Authorities Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services and the Local Government Association.

Daniel Kawczynski: The Minister will know that the responsibility for maintaining these licences has shifted from magistrates to local councils, yet there has been no extra financial help for them. What measures does he intend to take to ensure that they have extra resources to do this—[Interruption.]—particularly in Shrewsbury?

James Purnell: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has misunderstood the Act. There are extra resources. We made it absolutely clear that any extra costs from the implementation of the Act would be covered by fees and we set up an independent review to look into exactly that. It was very important that we did that, because previously magistrates courts' budgets were subsidising the licensing of alcohol to the tune of £25 million, and that money was obviously therefore not available for other important activities undertaken by magistrates.

Michael Connarty: Does my hon. Friend not think that the problem with the debate that we are having about the new law is that there is a failure to implement parts in that law and in previous laws to fine the licensees and the bar staff who feed people drink when they are clearly out of their mind with it, and that is why binge drinking is such a problem? Can we not enforce the penalties on the licensees so that they do not give drunk young people more drink just to make profits?

James Purnell: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The police had lost confidence in the previous law. They were worried that it was broke and would not deliver what they wanted. We have given them the extra powers that they requested. That is why, for example, the Police Superintendents Association always backed the Act's implementation, and why we have worked closely with the police on it, and we will continue to do so as the Act comes in. But the key point is to change the culture of drinking in the country. The Licensing Act is one step on the way to doing so, but obviously it will need to be accompanied by action on other fronts, such as health and education, and we are working with other Departments on that as well.

Malcolm Moss: Earlier in the year, the Prime Minister gave an assurance in a reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) on licensing fees, that the Government did not
	"want sports clubs to be unfairly burdened by disproportionate fees."
	Given that the latest evidence from the Central Council of Physical Recreation shows that 56 per cent. of sports clubs fall into the higher licensing bands C to E, can the Prime Minister's words be trusted?

James Purnell: Of course they can. That is why we have asked the independent review by Les Elton to look into exactly that issue, and it has committed to doing so. If it makes any recommendations, we will look at those seriously. But obviously it is also open to sports clubs to apply to benefit from community amateur sports club status, which would save them far more money than any fee that would be covered under the Act.

Indian Film Industry

Stephen Pound: What progress has been made in respect of strengthening UK links with the Indian film industry.

Tessa Jowell: Because of our commitment to strengthening the links between the Indian and the UK   film industries, I signed a substantive framework for the UK/India film co-production agreement in New   Delhi on 5 December. We will now work closely with our Indian counterparts to finalise the agreement as early as possible in the new year.
	I should like to pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend for the enormous amount of work that he does in building cultural and other links between our country and India.

Stephen Pound: So comprehensive, so fulsome and so welcome were my right hon. Friend's words that the House may well feel that only a bounder could be so churlish as to trespass upon my right hon. Friend's patience by troubling her with a supplementary question. So, will my right hon. Friend join me in commending the positive role played by the UK Film Council and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in making the co-production treaty happen? Furthermore, will she consider leading a UK business delegation to Asia's largest entertainment summit, Frames, in 2006, to look at ways in which our new co-production relationship with India can be even further strengthened?

Tessa Jowell: To all my hon. Friend's questions, the answer is yes.

Mark Field: Some of my Soho constituents welcome the Chancellor's announcements on film financing in the   recent pre-Budget report. I accept that other Soho folk might have welcomed somewhat different concessions. The Chancellor's announcements, however, were a belated recognition of the essential need for long-term planning in the film business. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge the key importance of commercial certainty in that internationally competitive market, especially in the Indian subcontinent?

Tessa Jowell: Yes, the Chancellor and I certainly recognise that. The House will want to pay tribute to the announcement in the pre-Budget report of the new outline tax regime for film, which has been widely welcomed and has created a climate of stability, although there is still detail to be finalised. It has exceeded the expectations of the UK Film Council and is already beginning to signal new inward investment, which we should all welcome.

Ashok Kumar: I praise the Secretary of State for building up this great link between ourselves and the Indian film industry. The former pit village of Fishburn in the north-east is now the setting for a Bollywood blockbuster, which has provided great opportunities, believe it or not, for young Asian stars to take part and make a success of it. What effort is she making to promote opportunities for young Asian stars to get into the film industry and make such a success?

Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The example that he gives is a vivid illustration of the benefits that such film collaboration and co-production bring in practice. While we would want to ensure diversity and opportunities for young Asian talent in every aspect of the film industry, in many senses the market does that because of the scale of demand. People want to watch young Asian stars, so selling the case for their training and involvement is not an enormous amount of trouble. I thank him, however, for his advocacy.

Digital Television

Anne McIntosh: If she will make a statement on the roll-out of digital television in North Yorkshire.

James Purnell: The vast majority of households in North Yorkshire can, with the   appropriate equipment, receive digital television services. The Government are committed to ensuring that at digital switchover everyone in the UK who can currently get the main public service broadcasting channels in analogue form can receive them on digital without needing to pay a subscription.

Anne McIntosh: I wonder why the Vale of York, which is covered by both Yorkshire Television and Tyne Tees Television, will be among the last areas to be switched over, and why, given that the Treasury will benefit directly from the proceeds of the auction of analogue spectrum, the BBC is to pay for the switchover?

James Purnell: The order in which regions will be turned off was decided by Ofcom in consultation with technical experts and was not really a matter for Government. It would be inefficient and a waste of taxpayers' money to continue to broadcast in both analogue and digital format. Of course, that money is not for the Treasury but for the taxpayer, and looking after the taxpayers' interests is exactly what we are doing.

Sport (Women)

Sandra Gidley: If she will make a statement on the participation of women in sport.

Richard Caborn: The Department is committed to its public service agreement target of increasing the number of women participating in sport by 3 per cent. by 2008. We are implementing a range of measures to achieve that objective.

Sandra Gidley: Does the Minister agree that role models are all-important? He will be aware that of the just more than £6 million given in athlete personal awards last year, £3.8 million was given to men, but only £2.3 million to women. What is he doing to address that inequality and to increase the participation of women at other levels to feed into the highest level of sport?

Richard Caborn: I do not recall the figures that the hon. Lady has given, but I can tell her that we have an equity agreement with all the governing bodies, which is observed by UK Sport and Sport England. I believe that 44 per cent. of scholarships went to women during the last round of awards under the talented athlete scholarship scheme. As for world-class performance, it will depend on the position held in the world-class rankings by the Paralympic and Olympic teams and, indeed, by others in the elite. There is an agreement between the governing bodies on that. I accept that more can be done to encourage females to participate in sport, but I think that that is being achieved by many of the initiatives launched by the governing bodies, Sport England and UK Sport.
	There has been a massive increase—of some 53 per cent.—in the number of women taking part in football over the past three or four years following an investment of some £3 million by the Football Foundation in coaching of women and girls, and a major increase in investment by the active sports body, which is Sport England—[Interruption.] I do not know what the hon.   Lady is saying from a sedentary position, but across the spectrum we have moved the agenda forward dramatically.

Vera Baird: Has my hon. Friend had a chance to consider the impact on women in sport of public authorities' duty to promote gender equality, which will come into force when the Equality Bill is enacted? I am thinking particularly of schools. The Women's Sports Foundation has found that some single-sex classes, especially swimming classes, are being stopped because of fears that they do not comply with equality legislation. Participation in sport remains low among women and girls despite our best efforts, although it is increasing, and single-sex classes and teams are an important tool for the encouragement of such participation. Will my hon. Friend ensure that good guidance is available when that gender duty comes onstream, so that the distinction is drawn between equality and treating everyone in the same way?

Richard Caborn: My hon. and learned Friend has asked an important question, to which I give an emphatic "Yes". The position will be monitored, and we will report to the House.

Andrew MacKinlay: Next time he speaks to the appropriate football authorities, will the Minister raise with them the issue of the international competitions in which our teams are involved? In some countries, women cannot attend and watch football matches. Are we not acquiescing, by our silence, in gender discrimination? We are supporting lucrative sports from which women spectators are excluded. I am thinking particularly of the exclusion of women from international football matches in Iran.

Richard Caborn: That stretches a question about women's participation in sport in England, but having just returned from Saudi Arabia I understand what my hon.   Friend means. I attended a graduation ceremony where four females received graduate awards from Loughborough and Manchester universities. That was a major step in the right direction. I hope that the process will continue in Saudi Arabia and will eventually reach Iran, because I agree with my hon. Friend that everyone should be able to enjoy sport, including football.

BBC Licence Fee

David Gauke: What recent discussions she has had regarding BBC licence fee proposals.

Tessa Jowell: The Government are currently conducting a funding review to determine the level of the new licence fee settlement that will apply from April 2007. We will announce the outcome in due course.

David Gauke: Given that the licence fee is set to increase by nearly 20 per cent. over the next seven years—

Chris Bryant: No, it is not.

David Gauke: It is, potentially. Given that fact, and given that the main purpose is to help to cover the cost that the BBC will incur in facilitating the switch from analogue to digital broadcasting, will not the licence fee be used as yet another stealth tax that will hit the poorest hardest?

Tessa Jowell: No, that is not the case. With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, he is jumping ahead of the conclusions that the Government will reach as we consider both the BBC's proposals and the results of the independent assessment that we have commissioned. That will ensure that we reach a licence fee settlement under which the viewing public get what they want—continued high-quality and diverse programming and a BBC that is strong and independent of the Government.

Bob Blizzard: May I thank the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell), for coming along to a recent meeting of the all-party commercial radio group to answer questions on this topic? One question put to him was about market impact assessments for new BBC services, so may I ask my right hon. Friend whether she has decided whether they would cover major changes to existing services and how much weight will be given to market impact assessments when the public value test is carried out for new BBC services?

Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He has identified one set of important considerations that we are looking into in connection with the White Paper proposals. We know how strong public support is for a well-funded BBC, but we also know that the BBC can have a serious impact on the competitiveness and performance of commercial broadcasters, so we must get the balance right. My hon. Friend is right to identify two forms of market impact assessment: those that apply to completely new services, which will certainly have such assessments, and those that apply where a substantial change is made to an existing service. What will help greatly is the BBC's proposal that every channel should operate a service licence, which will create more clarity than we have ever had before. Tougher discipline and greater transparency will play an important role for the BBC trust under the new arrangements.

John Whittingdale: Given that the BBC's total licence fee income has grown by 50 per cent. over the last 70 years—I mean seven years—

Robert Key: It seems like 70.

John Whittingdale: Yes. Given that the BBC's income now exceeds the combined total advertising income of ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, GMTV, S4C and all the digital channels put together, does the Secretary of State agree that it is difficult to justify a licence fee increase above inflation at all, let alone 2.3 per cent. above the increase in the retail prices index that the BBC has asked for?

Tessa Jowell: With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, who chairs the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, I will not be drawn further on the outcome of deliberations on the level of licence fee. Voices from all around the Chamber will want to contribute to the conclusions, which will be announced in due course.

Brian Jenkins: My right hon. Friend will know that many people in this country, including me, believe that the BBC licence fee provides good value for money. In the multi-producer and multi-provider industry that has now developed, however, should not the BBC charter include an obligation continually to assess value for money and to make the public aware of that work? The public could then believe that they do indeed receive value for money from the rather peculiar monopoly position that the BBC enjoys.

Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He will know that public consultation on the BBC charter—conducted for the first time ever—has reflected the public view that, by and large, the BBC licence fee represents value money. The new BBC trust that will oversee the management of the organisation and be responsible for its governance will also have precisely the responsibility that my hon. Friend has identified—to ensure that the licence fee payer, to whom the trust will be responsible, gets value for money.

Nigel Dodds: Does the Secretary of State share the concern expressed by many of my constituents at reports of swingeing increases in the BBC licence fee? Does she not think that the concept of a flat-rate, regressive tax on households throughout the country is something of an anachronism?

Tessa Jowell: No, I do not accept that, and the Government have already announced in the BBC Green Paper that the licence fee will continue to fund the BBC for the next 10 years. The hon. Gentleman says that it is a regressive form of taxation but, interestingly, when asked about it, the public, while recognising that it is a flat-rate charge, generally said that they believe that it is good value for money and fair. We will continue with it for the next 10 years.

John Grogan: Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should continue to celebrate the BBC's role as the great world public service broadcaster, producing everything from "Doctor Who" to Radio 4, from "Strictly Come Dancing"—won at the weekend by a Yorkshireman—to Radio 3? Should we not consider very carefully the BBC's proposal for an average £3 a year real-terms increase in the licence fee over the coming years, in order to provide more money for factual programming, high-definition TV and local and regional programming?

Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for that and I   am sure that we will want to agree with everything that he said about the importance of the BBC's contribution to our national life, and to take this opportunity to thank Darren Gough for the example that he gave to   potential "Strictly Come Dancing" contestants throughout the country.

Michael Fabricant: I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale), the current Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, is   going down the well-trod path of his predecessor, the   right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir   Gerald Kaufman), but I wonder whether I might disagree, in that I believe that the BBC offers good value for money. However, I challenge the Secretary of State on this point: is she aware that the BBC is having to make provision for a spectrum stealth tax in 2013 of £200 million? Will that not put pressure on the licence fee?

Tessa Jowell: In its initial bid for the licence fee, the BBC included all the costs that it might incur. The Government have set out their intention, in the light of the Cave report, to apply administratively efficient pricing in respect of the costs of spectrum. This issue will be visited post-switchover, in approximately 2010. It is true that broadcasters may incur this additional cost, and that will be taken into account in considering the licence fee settlement.

Olympic Games

Sadiq Khan: What steps her Department is taking to ensure the 2012 Olympic games encourage grass-roots participation in sports across the UK.

Richard Caborn: We are committed to driving up grass-roots participation in sport across the whole of the UK. We are working with key partners to maximise the benefits of hosting the games by building on existing programmes to encourage more people to become involved in sport.

Sadiq Khan: Is my right hon. Friend aware that building work is well under way at my old school, Ernest Bevin college, in Tooting, to develop a dojo and sports complex, thanks to more than £500,000-worth of Big   Lottery funding? The complex will be open not only to the school's 900 pupils, but to more than 350 pupils from local primary schools and, potentially, to hundreds of local residents outside school hours.

Richard Caborn: I know that my hon. Friend is very proud of that welcome development, which can be mirrored throughout the country. Such developments will prove very valuable. Starting next year, as we build to 2012, we hope to run an annual national schools' festival of sport throughout the nations and regions—Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the north, the midlands and the south—in which all our young people will be able to participate and thereby develop sporting excellence. Importantly, part of the legacy of the games will be a competition structure in our schools that will probably prove second to none in the world. That will put to bed once and for all the idea that competition is not important in sport.

David Davies: Does the Minister agree that any efforts to increase grass-roots participation in sport will be rendered almost worthless if schools continue to sell off their playing fields at the present rate?

Richard Caborn: I have heard some old records over and over in this place, but that is the oldest one. It must be a 75 that is still going around—[Interruption.] I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer that I gave some months ago, in which I reminded the House that when in government, the Conservatives were closing 40 playing fields a month. For the first time, we have had a net gain in playing fields, not to mention new sports facilities and synthetic pitches. We have had the biggest investment in sports facilities that this nation has seen for many years. I hope that he puts his 75 record away for Christmas.

Hon. Members: 78!

Andy Reed: I am probably too young to remember 78s. My right hon.   Friend is right to emphasise the success that we have had at school sports and, by 2010 and the lead up to the Olympics, we will have school sports and competition at the level at which we would like to see it. For those areas—Bath, Sheffield and Loughborough—which know what they are doing in terms of elite sports, we recognise the advances that have been made. But the major challenge remains the link between schools and clubs and local participation at a level that we can all see in our local communities. If we are to make the Olympic games a success, the real legacy will be not great stadiums and gold medals, but participation levels that match the best in the world. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that additional funding is made available for that over the next 10 years?

Richard Caborn: My hon. Friend makes an important point. Some 70 per cent. of those leaving school do not continue in active sport. That is a major fault line in   the structure of sport in this country, and it is why we have now invested some £60 million, through governing bodies, to strengthen the club structure. The   school to club link is very important if we are to have a sustainable—and I mean sustainable—sports infrastructure. The investment that we are putting in through the 400 school sports partnerships, which have been widely welcomed, would be worthless if it did not continue after young people had left school. Therefore, we are working with the national governing bodies to develop the school to club structure.
	I am pleased that all the governing bodies have now signed up to the coaching certificate, which will give us—for the first time—a five-level coaching scheme. We are investing heavily in that and we will have some 3,000 community coaches, who will also work on the school to club link. That shows that we are taking the issue seriously and investing in a sustainable sports infrastructure for the first time for many years.

Hugh Robertson: The Minister will be only too aware of the extreme disappointment among Olympic athletes at the lack of any extra funding in the pre-Budget report. Is he able to tell the House today whether he shares the British Olympic Association's stated aim of moving Great Britain from 10th to fourth in the medal tables by 2012?

Richard Caborn: It is unfortunate that we have knee-jerk reactions on this subject. Everything I have said today points to our efforts to put sustainable and well-funded structures in place. From 2001 to 2009, we will invest slightly more than a quarter of a billion pounds in elite athletes, irrespective of what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor does in any discussions that we have with him now. Obviously, everybody wants to see the UK do well in 2012, but judgments have to be made against the information available and the investment that we have made. It is unacceptable for people to say that we are going to move from 10th to fourth in the medal table when they do not have responsibility for funding and then, in a knee-jerk reaction, blame a Chancellor who has increased world-class funding since 1997 by just under 25 per cent. We will discuss investment in elite sport with the Treasury.

Alison Seabeck: What assessment she has made of the opportunities available to cultural organisations arising from the 2012 London Olympic games.

David Lammy: London's successful bid for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to establish a lasting legacy of participation in and engagement with cultural activities across the British population.

Alison Seabeck: I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. In Plymouth and the south-west we are working hard to meet the challenge of improving our cultural offer as well as our sporting offer as we move towards 2012, working with organisations such as Sport   England and the Big Lottery Fund. A number of key events are already planned; some are sport-related, while others link to national figures such as Darwin or   Brunel or to special events such as the abolition of   slavery. Will my hon. Friend confirm that his Department will continue to encourage and support areas outside London, contrary to recent press reports, as we strive both to celebrate and to benefit from the Olympics?

David Lammy: Absolutely. My hon. Friend will know that we appointed Jude Kelly to champion cultural activities across the country and we are about to appoint a director for Olympic activity across the country. That is key: 2012 gives us the opportunity to showcase what every region in the country can do. Indeed, beyond 2012 all our cultural facilities, such as theatres, and the cultural activity of our young people will receive a boost, and the south-west is key to that.

National Lottery

Jim Cunningham: How much in lottery funds was distributed in the west midlands region in 2004–05; and if she will make a statement.

Richard Caborn: During 2004–05, 2,436 awards worth more than £79 million were made by lottery bodies to projects in the west midlands region. The actual spending will be spread over several years.

Jim Cunningham: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. How will choice be introduced by those organisations, and does he consult them on the projects and the funding of the projects?

Richard Caborn: Very much so. We have continuous dialogue, even more so now through the sports boards, which have gained a lot of power and responsibility in the regions. There is wide consultation on sport and for the first time a proper strategy is being developed, as well   as a little bit more joined-up thinking, and indeed joined-up money, to deliver many of the projects.

CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked—

Academies

John Pugh: Whether moneys spent on academies by dioceses are reported to the Church Commissioners.

Stuart Bell: I know that the hon. Gentleman is a vigorous campaigner on behalf of schools, especially in Southport and Sefton. The Church of England is a welcome partner in academy sponsorship because of its strong commitment to distinctive and inclusive education. There is no requirement for dioceses to report expenditure on schools to the commissioners.

John Pugh: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that answer, but if the Church Commissioners are not collecting information about the considerable sums being spent, who is monitoring that expenditure on behalf of parishioners and the wider Church?

Patrick Cormack: John Prescott.

Stuart Bell: I am glad to have the Deputy Prime Minister prayed in aid.
	There is no requirement for dioceses to report expenditure on schools to the commissioners; the dioceses are accountable and look at their own accountability. The Church of England has already provided several academies, most recently a joint academy with the Roman Catholic Church in a deprived area of Liverpool. That is a symbol of the Church's commitment to providing education for the most disadvantaged in society.

Provincial Episcopal Visitors

Robert Key: What the total cost was of provincial episcopal visitors in (a) the province of Canterbury and (b) the province of York in 2004–05.

Stuart Bell: Provincial episcopal visitors are "flying bishops" in the parlance of the Church. The figures for the calendar year 2004—the latest available—are £167,984 in the province of Canterbury and £81,675 in the province of York.

Robert Key: Will the Church Commissioners publish those helpful figures as a matter of routine? We cannot possibly reduce deeply held views about women priests to financial figures, but given that a lot of angels are flying around this Christmas-time, as well as flying bishops, may we expect an outbreak of peace and good will, as well as common sense, as we move on from women priests towards women bishops?

Stuart Bell: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The House consistently counts angels on the head of a pin and no doubt will do so in the future. We might have flying bishops and flying angels, but in 1993, as he knows, the Act of Synod was concerned that
	"the integrity of differing beliefs and positions . . . should be mutually recognised and respected".
	There is a long synodical process regarding women bishops, but I am always happy to refer to the Archbishop what I think is a strong wind behind that in the House.

Ordinands

Chris Bryant: How many ordinands are in (a) residential and (b) non-residential training.

Stuart Bell: There are currently 532 ordinands in residential training and 822 in non-residential training. The House of Bishops will be considering a general strategy for colleges at its January meeting and I shall, of course, transmit any views that my hon. Friend has.

Chris Bryant: That means that there is a significant move towards non-residential training in the Church of England. Does my hon. Friend worry that the Church of England needs not only managers, but theologians—people who have studied theology as an academic discipline? Will he take it from me, as an external adviser on the Oxford theology degree, that few people now study such academic courses in this country? Is there not a danger that theology will wither on the vine in the Church of England?

Stuart Bell: I would be very surprised if theology withered on the vine because the Archbishop of Canterbury is one of the finest theologians that we have   and a great example to us all on theology. My hon.   Friend is right that the choice between residential and non-residential training courses depends on several factors. I look forward to the merger of Ripon college with the Oxford ministry course, which will strengthen the college, allow for new types of training along the theological lines to which he referred and draw on the   full strength of full-time and part-time modes of training.

English Heritage

Anne McIntosh: What discussions the commissioners have had with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the level of English Heritage grants for church repairs.

Stuart Bell: The commissioners and other Church representatives recently met the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy). May I say how grateful I am to him for standing in for me during the last Question Time? He did such a fine job that he might be called on to do so again in the future. At the meeting, the need for more Government support to enable churches' contributions to the community to be sustained and enhanced was emphasised. We shall meet the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the new year.

Anne McIntosh: Will the hon. Gentleman take a strong message to the Chancellor from the House? The Chancellor told us that the reason why lower VAT on church repairs would not apply was that more money would be received from English Heritage in grant. We heard during the last Question Time—I know that the hon. Gentleman was not able to be present—that English Heritage grants will be slashed. Will the hon. Gentleman make the strongest possible representations so that we can get the maximum amount of grant for church repairs?

Stuart Bell: In 2003, as the hon. Lady is aware, the overall estimated cost of outstanding major repairs that were required to our 16,000 church buildings in England was £373 million. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee is holding an inquiry into the amount of money provided, which will include a consideration of   English Heritage and its funding. The Church Heritage Forum will make a submission in the new year.

Andy Reed: Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem is not always just money, but sometimes the interference of English Heritage? A church in my patch has the ability to raise its own funds and to offer facilities for the local community. However, the rather pedantic way in which English Heritage sometimes gets involved in such projects, holds back churches' ability to make provision for their local communities. Will my hon. Friend ensure that a balance is struck between the need for large parts of our English heritage to remain and the need to ensure that such buildings are used?

Stuart Bell: The question of use is pertinent. We often refer to "faith tourism" regarding cathedrals and churches. It would be a matter of regret if bureaucracy intervened to prevent the repair of our churches and the appropriate money from being secured. We are always grateful to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for his listed places of worship grant scheme, which involves VAT, but we also need substantial improvements to the grant money that goes to the Church over time.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMISSION

The Chairman of the Public Accounts Commission was asked—

National Audit Office

Philip Hollobone: If he will make a statement on the recent performance of the National Audit Office.

Edward Leigh: In the past financial year, the National Audit Office published 61 major reports across public expenditure programmes to Parliament, audited more than 570 accounts and provided advice and support to the Committee of Public Accounts and other Select Committees. That work led   to savings for the taxpayer of £515 million—a return of more than £8 for every £1 it cost to run the National Audit Office. In the 2005–06 financial year, the   National Audit Office has so far published 30 major reports and audited more than 400 accounts.

Philip Hollobone: Were it not for the good work of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, would not this wasteful Government have wasted hundreds of millions of pounds more?

Edward Leigh: My hon. Friend will appreciate that, in my present position, I do not want to get involved in party politics—[Hon. Members: "Oh, go on."]—but I will say that all Governments are masters of spending public money but often far less proficient at ensuring that that translates into better public services. Basic errors are repeated time and again, despite fine words and earnest assurances to the Committee of Public Accounts. Many public services are chronically marred by deadening complexity and bureaucracy, there is a continuing lack of leadership and drive, and Government Departments still disregard common and well-publicised pitfalls when they approach projects. My Committee will continue to ensure that we receive value for money for every pound spent.

David Heath: The National Audit Office has frequently drawn attention to deficiencies in defence procurement. In that light, will the hon. Gentleman tell us whether the commission has   discussed with the apparently soon-to-be-abolished Advisory Committee on Business Appointments whether the 344 civil servants and Ministers who have left government and entered the defence-related industries have improved or diminished the value for money obtained in defence procurement?

Edward Leigh: It is certainly true that there is an increasing and complex interface between the public and private sectors. My Committee will carefully scrutinise all Departments and Ministries of State carefully to ensure that those who leave the public sector allow a reasonable period of time to elapse before they enter the private sector, so that there is no risk of corruption or of people using information that they have obtained in the public service to further their own careers.

ELECTORAL COMMISSION

The hon. Member for Gosport, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked—

Parliamentary Elections

Peter Bone: Whether the Electoral Commission has recently been consulted on changing the method by which hon. Members are elected.

Peter Viggers: The commission understands that the Government are conducting research to examine the experience of new voting systems introduced to United Kingdom elections since 1997. The commission has not been asked to contribute to that process, nor is there an obligation on the Government to consult the commission in those circumstances.

Peter Bone: I hope that there will be no change to the method of electing hon. Members to this House, but if proposals are to be made I ask that the equalisation of numbers in constituencies be considered.

Peter Viggers: Although there is statutory provision to transfer the responsibility for parliamentary constituencies to the Electoral Commission, that provision has not yet been implemented. However, my hon. Friend has made his point and I am sure that it will be heard.

CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked—

Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund

Ben Chapman: What use the commissioners expect to make of the faith communities capacity building fund; and if he will make a statement.

Stuart Bell: The commissioners welcome the existence of the fund administered by the Community Development Foundation, through which some £5 million will be distributed between January 2006 and March 2007. The   commissioners have not made use of the fund, but the Church's community and urban affairs unit has promoted it among regional groupings.

Ben Chapman: Will my hon. Friend join me in expressing the hope that the Church Commissioners will use that valuable fund as widely as possible and in ways that help to build interfaith linkages within communities and linkages between rural and urban communities, and in the development of faith trails for all to enjoy?

Stuart Bell: As my hon. Friend is aware, interfaith activity involves programmes designed to bring people of different faiths together in rural and urban areas   to   promote mutual understanding, respect and co-operation. Capacity building involves strengthening groups' organisational capabilities, enabling them to sustain themselves and to play a full part in society, and this is a valuable contribution.

ELECTORAL COMMISSION

The hon. Member for Gosport, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked—

Greg Clark: How many publications have been funded through the polcy development grant to each qualifying political party; and what arrangements have been made to give members of the public up-to-date information on the availability of such publications.

Peter Viggers: The policy development grant scheme is intended to assist eligible parties in developing policies for inclusion in their manifesto. It is a matter for the parties to make the public aware of their policies through publication of their manifesto or other activities.

Greg Clark: Some of us are sceptical about the value of state funding of political parties, but if it is to be done, it is important that it should be done transparently. My hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), the Leader of the Opposition, has made a commitment to publish the working papers of the commission dealing with policy so that they are available for everyone to inspect. Should this be a requirement for all political parties?

Peter Viggers: The Electoral Commission takes the view that it is not necessary to have further explanation of the work undertaken. It has made recommendations in its review of expenditure in 2004. My hon. Friend, who has personal experience of the application of the policy development grant scheme, will be pleased that the commission has recommended that the scheme be expanded from £2 million a year to £3 million a year.

European Council

Tony Blair: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the European Council in Brussels on 15–16 December.
	The main issue at this European Council was the European Union budget for 2007–13, the first budget ever for the enlarged Europe of 25 member states, soon to become 27 with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania.
	This country can be proud of the part that we played in the enlargement of the EU. The countries of central and eastern Europe that for so long suffered under communist dictatorship are now free democracies and   vibrant new members of the EU. To have   championed the cause of those new states, to have welcomed them into NATO and Europe and then to have refused to agree a budget that protects their future economic development would have been a betrayal of everything that Britain has rightly stood for in the past 15 years or more since the fall of the Berlin wall. They are our allies. It is our duty to stand by them. But it is also massively in our national interest. These new member states have fast-growing, open economies, new ideas, human capital and a political vision of Europe that is close to ours.
	However, although they are catching up economically, they are still much poorer than most of the original European Union 15; their people half as   wealthy as in the rest of Europe. The purpose of the   budget is rightly to transfer resources from the wealthiest west of Europe to the poorer east of Europe. Over the coming years, within a broadly stable budget, funds for the new member states will increase from €24 billion to €174 billion, a seven-fold increase.
	In time, of course, this makes them prosperous and us too. If we look at the example of Ireland and Spain, bilateral trade with those countries in goods alone is now more than €60 billion a year. Investment in the future prosperity and stability of eastern Europe brings big and lasting benefits to this country.
	The reason that it was so important to reach agreement at the European Council is as follows: as all central and eastern European leaders made clear to me, it was essential to have a December deal to allow those countries to plan and prepare for using the EU funds when those funds start in 12 months' time. It was clear that the prospects for a deal next year were negligible, and, if there were to be no deal, then in 2007 the European Parliament would take over the budget process. That would mean the Parliament setting annual budgets, on the existing financial agreements, which would have meant that countries such as Poland would have lost around two thirds of their EU funds. That is why they wanted a deal now.
	Of course, there is also a need for fundamental reform of the EU budget. As I said in June, what we need is to settle the budget on the basis of everyone paying their fair share of the costs of enlargement now; and then to open up the prospect of a radically reformed budget midway through the next budget period. The agreement reached on Saturday morning differed from that of the Luxembourg proposal in four key respects. The overall budget is smaller. The proposal in June was that the UK rebate should be reduced in commitment terms by about €22.5 billion; under this deal, the maximum we shall pay is €10.5 billion. In the review clause in June, the common agricultural policy agreement of 2002 was specifically endorsed. Now it is clear that all aspects of the budget can be examined in 2008–09. However, crucially for Britain, this agreement states expressly—unlike that of June—that the British rebate remains in full on all expenditure in the original 15 member states. It remains in full on all common agricultural policy market expenditure everywhere in the Union, including in the new member states. We have, however, agreed to disapply a proportion of the rebate on structural and cohesion spending in the new member states—in effect, on the spending directly designed for economic development. As I have said, the cost of this is up to a maximum of €10.5 billion or about £7 billion over the next seven years of the financing period. Moreover, because the rebate stays on all common agricultural policy and all spending in the original European 15, the rebate will rise, not fall, to an average of €5.8 billion in payments terms annually from 2007. Overall, the rebate will get us about €41 billion back in the next budget period—substantially more than in this period. That is then the crucial leverage for future reform.
	As the strongest supporter of enlargement among all member states, I strongly believe that it was right—indeed, essential—that the UK should contribute properly to enlargement. The fact is that if we support and, indeed, drive through a policy of ending the post-war division of Europe, we have to be ready to accept our fair share of the costs of that policy. Enlargement was never, and could never be, a cost-free policy, and this Government are prepared to shoulder their responsibilities in this area, because it is the right   thing to do. In this context, I want to dispel one misunderstanding that has arisen—the impression that only the UK is contributing to the costs of enlargement. All wealthier countries are contributing. In terms of net contributions, our contribution will increase by 63 per cent. over the next financing period in comparison with 2000–06. France's contribution will increase by 124 per cent. Italy's contribution will increase by 126 per cent. Spain will lose in the region of €40 billion. Moreover, after some 20 years of our paying, under the original rebate, twice as much as France, UK and French contributions will, from 2007, for the first time, be in rough parity. Because the UK economy is now bigger than the French economy, we will, in fact, on the Commission's figures, be contributing a smaller share of our national wealth.
	Alongside this agreement on support for the modernisation of eastern Europe, we also agreed on a fundamental review of all aspects of the EU budget, including the common agricultural policy, to be led by President Barroso, with the recommendation that it begin in 2008. As the language in the European Council conclusions makes absolutely clear, it is then possible for changes to be made to this budget structure in the course of this financing period. This will also allow us to take account of any changes agreed in the World Trade Organisation round, including the decision to phase out all export subsidies for agriculture by 2013. In addition, it was agreed that any CAP spending for Romania and Bulgaria—about €8 billion—should be fitted within existing CAP ceilings, which is a significant budgetary discipline.
	So to summarise, when people ask what we got for agreeing to pay our fair share of enlargement, the answer is an agreement that sees us, for the first time since we joined the EU, paying no more than similar countries, such as France and Italy; the rebate staying put on all CAP spending and rising, not falling, in value; and a process that can, in the years to come, lead to the necessary fundamental reform of both rebate and CAP that we all want to see.
	I should report briefly that the Council also agreed on a strategic partnership between the European Union and Africa, on a new and strengthened policy on illegal migration and on a counter-terrorism plan. We also agreed that Macedonia should be granted candidate status—the next step in its path towards membership of   the European Union. As a strong supporter of Macedonia's ambitions, I want to congratulate the Macedonian Government on the progress that they have made towards that goal.
	The European Council also unreservedly condemned the Iranian President's recent remarks about Israel and warmly welcomed the 15 December elections in Iraq as a further step towards democracy and stability in that country.
	Over the past six months, the UK presidency has delivered the historic launch of accession negotiations—[Interruption.] It has delivered the launch of accession negotiations with Turkey and Croatia—a long-standing British objective. We have delivered a number of important pieces of legislation, including the REACH—registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—regulations and the data retention directive, which is an important measure against terrorism. We have delivered reform of the EU sugar regime and a strengthening of the EU position on climate change—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Bellingham, you are out of order, and you are not the only one. After the Prime Minister has finished, I shall seek to protect the Leader of the Opposition, and I cannot do that if hon. Members are shouting at the Prime Minister.

Tony Blair: And we have delivered an EU budget deal that is €160 billion cheaper than the original Commission proposals, provides for a huge transfer of spending from the original 15 to the new member states of eastern Europe, and preserves the British rebate in full on the CAP and all spending in the   EU 15. I commend all this to the House.

David Cameron: This was the year that Europe needed to change direction; this was the year that the people of Europe rejected the constitution; and this was the year that people called for the end of the obscenity of protectionism that damages the developing world. The Prime Minister rightly talked at the time of a crisis in European leadership, so the question for him is whether the British presidency and the new budget even begin to measure up to those challenges.
	We warmly welcome the accession talks with Turkey and Croatia. We welcome what the Prime Minister said about Macedonia and the EU partnership with Africa, but has not progress elsewhere been desperately slow?
	On the budget, does the Prime Minister remember having three clear objectives: first, to limit its size, when almost every country in Europe is taxing and borrowing too much; secondly, to ensure fundamental reform of the CAP; and, thirdly, to keep the British rebate unless such reform occurs? Is it not now clear that he failed in every single one?
	First, the Prime Minister said that he wanted the size of the budget to be set at 1 per cent. of Europe's income. Can he confirm that the budget that he has just agreed is higher than that, higher than the compromise that he tabled and will mean £25 billion in extra spending? The Prime Minister says that that is intended to pay for enlargement, so will he confirm that Ireland, which is richer per capita than Britain, is getting more per head than Lithuania, Slovakia and Poland?
	Secondly, the Prime Minister wanted to change the things that the budget was spent on. Is it not clear that he has failed to do that as well? Is it not the case that CAP spending will be higher next year, the year after that and in every year up to 2013? The Chancellor said that CAP reform was necessary to make poverty history. The Prime Minister told the House in June that he wanted to   get rid of the CAP. Will he confirm that, four months later, his own Europe Minister said that the Government had not made any detailed proposals to reform the CAP? Is it not the case that the entire Government spent four years doing nothing about something that the Prime Minister thought was essential?
	Will the Prime Minister be clear about what he has secured on the CAP? It is a review and it takes place in 2008. Can he confirm that, in that year, the presidency will be held by France? Is he aware that the French Foreign Minister has said that Jacques Chirac has secured that there will be no reform to the common agricultural policy before 2014? Is that not the opposite of what the Prime Minister actually wanted? In other words, he has completely failed to deliver CAP reform.
	What about the Prime Minister's third objective: if all else fails, keep the rebate? All else did fail, and the Prime Minister's position was clear. He used to say the rebate was non-negotiable. He said at that Dispatch Box in June:
	"The UK rebate will remain and we will not negotiate it away. Period."—[Official Report, 8 June 2005; Vol. 434, c. 1234.]
	The Chancellor said that it was non-negotiable and fully justified. Then the Prime Minister changed his mind. The rebate could be negotiated, he said, provided that there was fundamental reform of the CAP. So it was clear that the only circumstances in which the rebate would be given up was if there were a commensurate and equal giving up of farm subsidies.
	That is not an unreasonable position and, at that time, he knew all about the other considerations he   mentioned today, including the importance of supporting enlargement. But what happened? The farm subsidies remain and £7 billion of the rebate has been negotiated away. If that was always the Government's plan, why was not any reduction in the rebate in the Chancellor's pre-Budget report? We are told that the   Chancellor did not even know about the final deal. Normally, it is the Chancellor who does not tell the Prime Minister about what is in the Budget; this time the   Prime Minister did not tell the Chancellor.
	Can the Prime Minister confirm that, by 2011, the UK will be losing £2 billion a year and that that will be the baseline from which we negotiate? Will he confirm that the amount he has given up from the rebate is almost double our entire overseas aid budget this year?
	In June, the Prime Minister told the House that no deal was better than a bad deal. He said:
	"Europe's credibility demands the right deal—not the usual cobbled-together compromise in the early hours of the morning."—[Official Report, 20 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 524.]
	Did he remember that when he was cobbling together this compromise in the early hours of the morning? Why did he give up £7 billion for next to nothing? Vitally, how is the Chancellor going to pay for it—more taxes, more borrowing or cuts in spending? Which is it?
	A good budget deal would have limited spending; it would have reformed the CAP and it would have helped change Europe's direction. Is it not the case that none of those things happened under the British presidency? Europe needed to be led in a new direction. Are we not simply heading in the same direction but paying a bigger bill?

Tony Blair: No, we are not, for the very simple reason that the direction of Europe is towards enlargement. That is why we have allowed those 10 new countries to come in.
	Let us just see for a moment where we agree and disagree. The hon. Gentleman supports enlargement; yes, he supports enlargement.—[Interruption.] Come on. He supports the wealthy countries paying for the poorer countries. That is right too; isn't it? Although he supports enlargement and he supports the wealthy countries paying for the poorer countries, he does not support Britain paying any money for it. He talks about a crisis in the European Union. What sort of crisis would there be if he were in charge with that policy?
	The hon. Gentleman talks about the rebate. Let me tell him that the rebate, as I have just explained, is rising not falling—[Hon. Members: "No, it is not."] Yes, it is, because it remains on all common agricultural policy money. He and his Back Benchers say, "Why is not France paying for this?", but France is getting a bigger net contribution loss than Britain in the next financial   perspective.—[Interruption.] Let me explain to hon.   Members what is actually happening: the structural and cohesion fund budget covers about 35 per cent. of all spending. At the moment, it mainly goes to wealthy countries, but it will mainly go to poorer countries. The wealthy countries will therefore pay to the poorer countries, and we are a wealthy country, which is why we should pay our fair share. People like the hon. Gentleman, who say that they are in favour of enlargement but refuse to follow through on the consequences of that position, are not exercising leadership; they are abdicating leadership.
	The hon. Gentleman has said that he would have negotiated something different, but let us work out who his allies would be in such a new European Union.—[Interruption.] One of his first leadership decisions was to withdraw from the EPP, which contains the other Conservative parties in Europe, and this is what his own Members of the European Parliament have said about it. Mr. Struan Stevenson has said:
	"We would have to sit round the table on a weekly basis with these fascists and nutters"—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. If hon. Members stop shouting, I would be able to hear what the Prime Minister has to say.

Tony Blair: It is actually worse than that. If the Conservatives withdraw from the EPP, Jean-Marie Le Pen will sit there, Mrs. Mussolini will sit here, the Conservative party will sit there and, worst of all, Robert Kilroy-Silk will sit there. [Laughter.] Before the hon. Gentleman attacks my leadership in the European Union, he should start to exercise some himself.

Charles Kennedy: As the Prime Minister knows, the Liberal Democrat party has consistently supported the enlargement of the EU and welcomes that development, which, following the collapse of the Berlin wall, is good for us in Europe and for the world generally. I acknowledge that that development must come with a financial price tag in order to meet moral, political and economic objectives. Having achieved a degree of expansion, we also welcome the opening of accession talks with Turkey and Croatia and the approval of candidate status for Macedonia in this presidency.
	Given the ideals that the Prime Minister properly set out at the beginning of the UK presidency, there is a great deal of disappointment with its conclusion, not least where common agricultural policy reform is concerned. First, is not the truth of the matter that the stitch-up between France and Germany over CAP reform, to which the Prime Minister had to put his name, that took place two years ago is what has made the British position so difficult today?
	Secondly, the French managed to call his bluff on the issue at the summit. The Prime Minister has said:
	"and then to open up the prospect of a radically reformed Budget midway through the next Budget period."
	The French Foreign Minister has said that there will be no reform of CAP before 2013.
	Those two statements do not marry up. Will the Prime Minister confirm that when the much-vaunted review takes place, it will consist of a review by the Commission, which will result in a document being submitted to a subsequent Council of Ministers, which will decide the matter? The review carries no more force or persuasiveness than that.
	In terms of pursuing long-term British interests, albeit that this has been a somewhat disappointing presidency, does the Prime Minister agree that disengagement within the European Parliament or elsewhere is a recipe for absolute disaster? This at a time when someone is making speeches about pursuing a green environmental agenda; indeed, Europe is a very logical place to pursue that. In the last European Parliament, the British Conservatives held the chairmanship of the Environment Committee. If they pursue their current course of action, they will not hold the chairmanships of any committees. That will be a loss not only for them but for Britain.
	The outcomes of this summit are disappointing but   not disastrous. It deserves to be particularly disappointing for those Eurosceptics who want to see Britain fragmented from Europe, rather than Europe succeeding in the longer term.

Tony Blair: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his general welcome for what we have done. One can only imagine what would have happened had we failed to reach a budget deal this December in terms of our relationships with the central and eastern European countries who are our allies, and of course with other new Governments, not least the German Government.
	The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw attention to what was said in June. I would repeat what I said in this House, if I may, when I reported from the Brussels Council:
	"I proposed that we have a fundamental review of the EU budget, reporting in time for us to be able—midway through the next financial period—to alter fundamentally the structure of the budget, dealing both with the rebate and the CAP."
	I went on to say:
	"In the meantime, of course, we would ensure that we paid our fair share of enlargement."—[Official Report, 20 June 2005; Vol.   435, c. 524.]
	The position is very clear. The opportunity to get the fundamental reform will come through the review. Twelve other countries joined with France in saying that they do not wish to disturb the CAP deal that was done in 2002. Of course, had we not been able to conclude that deal in 2002, enlargement would not have happened, because that summit concerned enlargement in respect of future spending. It is worth pointing out to people who criticise the deal reached in 2002 that, without it, we would never have got those countries coming into the European Union in 2004.
	As the right hon. Gentleman said, there will, however, be a major battle when the review is published. As the President of the Commission made clear today, it will be a fundamental review of what the money is spent on and how it should be spent. It will also, of course, be about a proper and sensible way of deciding that according to wealth people should pay, and according to need they should receive. The one thing that is obvious is that the   budget does indeed need fundamental change, but   the whole point about getting this deal in December is that, without it, the new central and eastern European countries could not have planned ahead for the next budget period. That is why we had to have an immediate deal in December so that they could have the certainty of the money coming to them, and then, in the medium and longer term, the prospect of the mid-term review that would allow us fundamentally to change the structure of the budget.
	The right hon. Gentleman is right that there will be a   huge battle between the reformers and the non-reformers. But who are our allies in the reform struggle? They are the very countries in central and eastern Europe that, if we had not done a deal, would have been completely alienated from this country. No one should be in any doubt about that. After our ding-dong, I   simply say to the Leader of the Opposition that it is important for the Conservatives to think very carefully about their position of withdrawing from the EPP. That would be a disaster in terms of this country being able to procure a good deal in Europe.—[Interruption.] The one thing that is very obvious from today's exchanges is that Euroscepticism is alive and well in the Tory party.

Stuart Bell: Would it not have been absolutely shameful for this Government not   to have agreed under their presidency of the European Union for transfers from the richer countries to the poorer countries? Would not we all be ashamed of ourselves had that not been the case? Is it not a fact that the forward march of Europe was halted with the referendums in Holland and France in the summer? Has it not been restarted with this presidency, this budget and the reform that will ensure that such last-minute horse trading will never happen again?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I said a moment or two ago, it would have been disastrous for this country's future relationship with central and eastern Europe had we not done our level best to get a budget deal. If we had not got a deal, in 2007 the European Parliament would have taken over a   set of annual budgets on the existing financial mechanisms, and those countries would have ended up with about a third or a quarter of the amount of money that they needed. It is hard to overstate the importance to those countries of getting this deal. That is why it would have been a disaster for this country not to have pursued it to a successful conclusion.

Michael Howard: Did not the Prime Minister know about the costs of enlargement when he told the House in June that he would not negotiate the rebate away, period?

Tony Blair: Which is why the rebate is rising, not falling.

Gisela Stuart: As it is the season of good will and new-found co-operation across the parties, when my right hon. Friend addresses the European Parliament tomorrow, will he send our condolences to Conservative Members about their new-found neighbours, now that they have left the EPP? Will he also be very proud when we open negotiations with Turkey on 3 October, because in years to come that will probably be seen as even more significant than the budget negotiations? Will he say more about why he is so confident that the review in 2008 will lead to true reforms of the CAP?

Tony Blair: I thank my hon. Friend for what she said. It is obviously extremely important that we begin Turkey's accession negotiations.
	Three things will drive people towards reform through the Commission's review. First, it is absolutely clear that people want a budget that is more rationally directed towards what they need for the future, including research and development and innovation. Even though the CAP has come down in the last 20 years from about 70 per cent. of the budget to 40 per cent., that still means that 40 per cent. of the budget is spent on 2 or, at most, 4 per cent. of the working population. Secondly, the World Trade Organisation negotiations will push people towards that. Thirdly, and   perhaps most importantly—and this is why it is important that we keep the rebate on all CAP spending and on all spending in the European member states—there is absolutely no way that we will be able to get that reformed and restructured budget unless everything is taken into account, and that was why it was important that the review specifically mentioned both the CAP and the rebate.

Ian Paisley: The Prime Minister mentioned that there was a discussion at the talks of terrorism and the counter-terrorist plan. Did he discuss the counter-terrorist plan in Northern Ireland? It seems strange to the people of Northern Ireland that the tragic situation that is developing in Northern Ireland cannot be debated in this House of Commons, but the Prime Minister can discuss it at the talks and skim over it when he makes his report. I remind him of the promise that he made to me on Wednesday that he would consider whether more information could be given to the House of Commons, and I hope that he will keep that promise.

Tony Blair: On that last point, although it is obviously not the issue of the statement, I am looking at what more we can say and put into the public domain, but it must be done in accordance with the advice that we receive as to what is legally proper. We are looking at that and I think that it would be helpful if we were able to give some more information, but it can be done   only with the consent of the proper authorities. I   emphasise once again, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman accepts this from me, that neither I, the Secretary of State nor Ministers were involved in the   decision. It was a decision taken by the Director of Public Prosecutions, as it should be. I am looking carefully at what more can be said, but it has to be within the bounds of what is legally proper.

John McFall: I congratulate the Prime Minister on achieving a deal that ensures that enlargement goes on. Does he agree with the shadow Foreign Secretary when he says that it holds out the prospect of an enlarged area of   peace and stability, the former leader of the Conservative party when he says that it will heal the   divide that scarred the continent, and the Leader of   the Opposition, with his short-term memory, who I   remind him stated that enlargement will be extremely important? Can the Prime Minister detail for me how much the budget deal will cost year on year from 2007 to 2014 in addition to what has already been budgeted for?

Tony Blair: In respect of the first point, it is important that people understand that if we support enlargement, it is absurd to say that we are not prepared to pay our fair share of the costs of enlargement. Over the budget period, the result of giving up a proportion of the rebate—it is only a proportion between 2007 and 2013—is a maximum cost of €10.5 billion. Once the increased budget is taken into account over the next period—this illustrates the absurdity of the suggestion that only Britain is paying—the total cost for France will be in the region of €31 billion. The contribution of Britain will be significantly less than that.

William Cash: In those heady days in 1997, I suggested to the Prime Minister that he was walking on water now but that he would drown in Europe. With the failure of the European constitution, the Lisbon agenda and his negotiations over the rebate, and having conceded effective victory to Angela Merkel and Jacques Chirac and being outflanked by them, does he accept that his European legacy is holed below the waterline?

Tony Blair: Virtually whatever we might do, the hon. Gentleman will think the same, which is no surprise as we have fundamentally different views of   Europe. He wants Britain out of the European Union,   whereas I think, particularly when the European Union is enlarging and pulling in countries that share our vision of Europe, that it is absurd for Britain in the 21st   century to withdraw from Europe. We have a different set of objectives from him, which makes him not a very good judge of whether we are successful or failing.

Dari Taylor: "Countries such as Poland are crying out for investment in their infrastructure, and wise use of structural funds could be crucial in helping their economies to prosper."—[Official Report, 5 June 2003; Vol. 406, c. 372.]
	I hope that my right hon. Friend agrees with that quotation from the previous shadow Foreign Secretary. Is the budget that my right hon. Friend has been so bold in negotiating sufficient to assist Poland and other countries that desperately need our help?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend is right that Poland stands to gain about €60 billion in economic development funds over the next financial period. That is of enormous assistance. We still have not had an answer from the Conservative party about whether it agrees that we should pay anything towards the costs of enlargement. Perhaps it will tell us now.

Michael Fabricant: You are in government.

Tony Blair: The hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that we are in government, as if that is the answer. Occasionally, it is customary for the Opposition to have a position.

Iain Duncan Smith: Back in June, the French were in disarray, President Chirac had lost the referendum on the constitution and was in a weak position, and the Prime Minister looked strong. Today, we are paying £1 billion more, and President Chirac has won the rebate and denied CAP reform. Does the Prime Minister realise that Britain, and not only him, now looks weak and pathetic in the eyes of the European leaders?

Tony Blair: How does the right hon. Gentleman therefore explain that France will pay more than Britain in the next financial period? France is also paying money. Let me try to educate him again. All the wealthy countries are paying more over the next budget period because the whole point of enlargement is to transfer from the wealthy to the poor. Let me read to him what he said about enlargement:
	"The Prime Minister is right to say that enlargement is a great prize that is worth fighting for. The 10 countries seeking membership of the EU will bring 70 million customers for British goods and services in a single market extending from the Atlantic to the Baltic."—[Official Report, 28 October 2002; Vol. 391, c.   543.]

Iain Duncan Smith: That is nothing to do with it.

Tony Blair: The right hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that that is nothing to do with it. The problem with the Tories is that they have not yet realised that Euroscepticism is a problem for them, not a solution. At some point, they might wake up to that. It is absurd, however, to say that one is in favour of enlargement, and that everybody else should pay for it but that we should not.

Doug Henderson: Perhaps the barmy army on the Opposition Benches does not understand the importance of reaching a budget settlement and the link to future trade, but the British people do, British industry does, British workers do and most Members of Parliament do. Can my right hon. Friend give the Opposition more of what he has already given them this afternoon?

Tony Blair: I simply point out that in each of the central and eastern European countries, as my hon. Friend rightly implies, there will be a tremendous development in trade in goods and services. As a result of the economic development of Ireland and Spain, for example, our trade over the past few years has grown enormously. Our trade with those countries is now about £40 billion a year, which is of enormous benefit to this country. When we pay our fair share—and it is our fair share, not more—we are actually making an investment, not merely in countries that have supported us politically but in countries whose economic success is of benefit to Britain. There are orders for goods and services as their infrastructure improves, and so forth.
	My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why it is important to recognise that this is not just about a deal at the European Union. It is also about fulfilling our role as champion of a Europe that is enlarging because enlargement, in the end, is in Britain's interest.

Alex Salmond: The wealthy countries may well be paying more, but they are also getting more. Will the Prime Minister confirm that as he sought agreement, he agreed to €2 billion extra for Spain and regional development funding, €2 billion extra for Italy, the regions of France and structural funding, €400 million extra for Germany, €150 million extra for Sweden, and the same for Austria? Meanwhile, the highlands and islands and the rest of Scotland will have a €500 million shortfall under the Commission's proposals for the European regional development fund.   Given that the Prime Minister achieved such a wonderful deal on the rebate, will he guarantee to Scotland and the regions of England and Wales that the Treasury will make up that shortfall pound for pound, euro for euro?

Tony Blair: I have made clear what we can and cannot do in respect of the structural funds. Incidentally, the figures that the hon. Gentleman read out were completely wrong. Spain, which has been a massive net recipient, will receive some €40 billion less. Wealthy countries that have been big net recipients will become net contributors. That process is inevitable when—as I tried to explain for, I think, the fifth time—the wealthy countries pay more to the poorer countries. That is what enlargement is about, and in the end it will benefit Scotland as well as the United Kingdom as a whole.

Hugh Bayley: We all know who was responsible for blocking cuts in European agriculture subsidies, and it was not our Prime Minister. Will he reassure Make Poverty History that he will continue to campaign for trade justice? Will he also talk to the friends that the United Kingdom has made in francophone Africa as a result of the progress that has been made for Africa during our presidency and try to persuade them and the Canadians to raise the case for CAP reform with France, Belgium and Luxembourg in the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie?

Tony Blair: I certainly will. My hon. Friend is right that it is important for us to keep up the pressure during the rest of the Doha trade round. The phasing out of agriculture export subsidies by 2013 represents at least some progress, and the aid-for-trade deal is also extremely important. However, I am aware—as, I think, are many others in the international community—that we must do far more if the trade round is to be a success.

Michael Ancram: For all his histrionics, is the Prime Minister really impervious to the feelings of betrayal among the people of this country who were led by him to believe that the British rebate was safe in his hands? Is not the truth that last weekend he gave away British jam today in return for French jamais tomorrow?

Tony Blair: I was pleased when the right hon. and learned Gentleman got to his feet, because I have a quotation from a speech that he made when he was shadow Foreign Secretary. This is what he said, talking of enlargement:
	"structural funds cannot continue to be used as they have been . . . Now these funds will be needed elsewhere. Countries such as Poland are crying out for investment in their infrastructure, and wise use of structural funds could be crucial in helping their economies to prosper. I hope that that will also be pursued."—[Official Report, 5 June 2003; Vol. 406, c. 372.]
	Well, we pursued it.

Louise Ellman: The Prime Minister has reported that Iran was condemned for its President's recent remarks about Israel. Did that refer to Iran's threat to wipe Israel off the map or was it to do with holocaust denial? What discussions took place about how to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons?

Tony Blair: I can tell my hon. Friend that it was in respect of the remarks about holocaust denial, as we had already condemned at an earlier Council the comments about the state of Israel. We will continue to work closely with our European partners and with the United States to try to make sure that Iran faces up to its international responsibilities. As my hon. Friend rightly implies, those remarks caused enormous offence right across the international community and raised a whole range of doubts and concerns about the Iranian regime.

Peter Viggers: These proposals have enormous financial implications, so what opportunity will the House have to debate and then vote on them?

Tony Blair: I am sure that there will be plenty of opportunity to debate them. It would be nice if at least one of the Conservative Members who are asking me questions would confirm whether they accept that we have to pay something for enlargement. Surely that must be right.

Edward Balls: Given that in the 21 years since the rebate was first negotiated in 1984, we have yet to see any fundamental reform of the common agricultural policy, does the Prime Minister think that this weekend's deal brings forward the prospect of serious CAP reform? What tangible steps does he believe that the Government and hon. Members can take between now and 2008 to make the prospect of real reform more likely?

Tony Blair: The important thing is that the Commission's review will relate to the whole of the budget, including the CAP, abatement and everything to do with how the EU is financed. The EU will then have to take decisions on the basis of that review, but I   think that there is increasing recognition that we need that fundamental restructuring. It was never going to happen this December; it was going to happen only once a deal was secured for the short term this December and then followed up by a mid-term review that would allow us to make that fundamental reform. It is possible to achieve that, but it will mean increasing the pressure for change within Europe. Frankly, that is best achieved by forming alliances with other like-minded countries in the EU, and those alliances would all have been put at risk if we had not tried to secure a proper budget in the meantime.

John Pugh: What provision is made in the settlement for structural funds received by Cornwall and Merseyside?

Tony Blair: I do not know the exact details, but perhaps I can write to the hon. Gentleman on that matter. Overall, of course, one has to accept that the structural and cohesion fund budget gets switched from the wealthy to the poor. That is true.

Tom Levitt: Does my right hon. Friend agree that we had a rebate in the first place only because others acknowledged that there were injustices in the system? As we work towards getting rid of those injustices—and, more importantly, as we work to ensure that they are not meted out on those more vulnerable or weaker than ourselves—it is natural for the rebate to be adjusted accordingly. Does he agree that the deal is not only honourable and—

Mr. Speaker: Order. One supplementary question is fine.

Tony Blair: There is a simple way of testing the proposition that my hon. Friend has rightly raised. Between 1984 and 2004, we paid roughly double the net contributions that France paid, but for the next financial period and for the first time in the history of the European Union, we will be in parity. That is why, frankly, it is so absurd to say that we have somehow got nothing from the deal. We have actually achieved parity for the first time. Naturally, both France and Britain will have to pay more if we want to see developments in eastern Europe.
	Underneath all the debates and arguments lies an important question—not just about budget reform, but in relation to enlargement—about the direction of Europe. Do we want further enlargement of the EU? Macedonia is a small country so enlargement can happen fairly easily there, but Croatia and Turkey are also coming up for membership. There is no way that we will be able to create the right context of consent across Europe for those major enlargements—I happen to believe that they are in the long-term interest of this country—unless we have a more rational budget. Such a budget will have to be decided in the future.

Richard Shepherd: When the Prime Minister made a statement to the House and stressed that the rebate was non-negotiable, he must surely have been aware that the EU had expanded to the east and that the common agricultural policy was dire and had grievous effects on the third world and the poorest nations, which the Government claim to be dedicated to helping. Does he realise that the House and the country believe that he threw away a good negotiating hand for nothing?

Tony Blair: Except that the rebate is rising and we have to pay our fair share of enlargement. But anyway, let me read out to the hon. Gentleman what I actually said back in June:
	"I proposed that we have a fundamental review of the EU budget, reporting in time for us to be able—midway through the next financial period"—
	not now, but midway through the next financial period—
	"to alter fundamentally the structure of the budget, dealing both with the rebate and the CAP."
	I went on to say:
	"In the meantime, of course, we would ensure that we paid our fair share of enlargement."—[Official Report, 20 June 2005; Vol.   435, c. 524.]
	That is precisely what I have secured.

Mike Gapes: The Prime Minister referred to the importance of our relations with the 10 new member states of the European Union, and he will be aware that one of them—Slovakia—will have the presidency of the EU in 2008. Is he also aware that there will be great support in the Balkans generally for the decision to give Macedonia candidate country status? Peace and security in the Balkans is vital for all of us in Europe and without this agreement, it could have been put at risk.

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend is of course absolutely right and that is another reason why this agreement is so important. Some Opposition Members seem to think that countries hold the presidency for a year, when, in fact, they hold it for six months. As my hon. Friend rightly says, the other presidency in 2008 is Slovakia, which is of course a great supporter of reform, but in any event, the real point that he makes is worth emphasising. In the end, we want to see the European Union expand to take in those Balkan countries that for decades—for centuries, even—have been a huge problem for the whole development of the European Union. If we ended up having no budget in respect of this enlargement—relating to central and eastern Europe—there is no way that we could have prepared the ground for future enlargement to include those Balkan countries. Whatever people may say about agreements such as this—there is always criticism of them—in the end, we had to do two things: to get an immediate deal that secures the short term and to get a process agreed that allows us to get the longer-term reform. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: had we not done the first thing, the enlargement that I assume all of us want to see—toward Croatia and Macedonia and, in time, other Balkan states—would have been put at risk.

Brian Binley: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I call Mike Penning.—[Interruption.] I mean Mr. Brian Binley.

Brian Binley: I am most grateful, Mr. Speaker; you may call me what you wish.
	There is clearly going to be a shortfall in respect of Treasury expectations and the lost rebate. Will the Prime Minister make it up through direct taxation, indirect taxation or more stealth taxes?

Tony Blair: Actually, as a result of the agreement, we start off with a zero percentage of the   costs of enlargement and build up over time. I   assume from what the hon. Gentleman said that he does not agree with paying any money toward enlargement, which is not very sensible.

Angela Eagle: May I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend on his skill in bringing to a successful conclusion the EU budget negotiations, and on reaching an agreement that enables the new European Union countries—the EU 10—to have at their disposal during the next budget period a sum twice the size of the post-war Marshall plan in order to develop their countries, which is in all our interests? Could he give me his opinion—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That will do. Other hon. Members want to get in.

Tony Blair: I thank my hon. Friend for that question and she is right to say that there will be a big transfer of money, but there are other interesting points to note about the central and eastern European countries. For example, my conversations with the Prime Minister of Estonia and with representatives of many of the other central and eastern European countries showed that they believe that they will very quickly become net contributors to the European budget. Their economies are doing extremely well, they are expanding quickly and they are massive economic reformers. What all of them therefore need is this seed corn investment, which allows them to grow quickly. In time, of course, the result will be a massive increase in   trade between those countries and this country. That is an example of the way in which the European Union has granted us such prosperity over the years.

David Curry: What steps can the Prime Minister take to ensure that the Doha trade round does not drift into failure in the early months of next year? Can he assure us that the 2008 expenditure review will not prevent the European Union from making a new offer on agricultural subsidies a great deal earlier than that, given that, in the light of world prices, the abolition of export rebates is a relatively low-cost option?

Tony Blair: I actually think that the opposite is true. Obviously, it is important that we do everything we can to secure progress in the Doha trade round, and that requires action by the European Union, the United States and Japan, as well as by Brazil, India and the other emerging economies. The review allows us to be in the position of saying that we are going to need fundamental reform in order to meet our trade obligations. The Doha round, even if it is fully successful, will not create immediate agricultural reform: it will set that reform out over a period of time. For example, export subsidies will be phased out by 2013. That helps us to get a better deal in the mid-term review for Europe as well as the individual countries.

Jim Sheridan: Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that the additional resources afforded to our eastern European partners will not be used, directly, indirectly or through creative accountancy, to undermine this country's manufacturing base?

Tony Blair: I assure my hon. Friend that the rules that apply mean that the economic development of those countries must take account of the criteria set out for all spending of structural and cohesion funds. However, there is a bigger positive for us. Those countries will increase in wealth and growth quickly, and that will be a market for our manufacturing industry.

Edward Leigh: Would it be a fair summary to say that originally we were not going to give up any of the rebate, then we would give it up only for fundamental reform of the CAP, and now we will give it up to pay for enlargement? If that is not the case, what concrete reforms will there be of the CAP before 2013? Would it not have been more honest of the Prime Minister to have come to the House and said that to us six months ago?

Tony Blair: I have just read out what I said six months ago, and that is not an accurate summary of what I said. The rebate will rise in value and we will receive more back in the rebate in the next financial period than in the last. The rebate will remain on all   agricultural spending. The rebate will remain on all spending in the original European 15. But we cannot say that those poorer countries should pay the rebate in respect of the money going to their economic development. Otherwise we would not be doing what I   said in June that we should, which is in the meantime—before the fundamental CAP reform takes place—to pay our fair share of the costs of enlargement. If we had refused to do that, there would have been no budget deal and there would have been crisis in all the central and eastern European states, and we would have been blamed for that. That would not have been very sensible negotiating.

Tony Lloyd: My right hon. Friend rightly pointed out that our natural allies in central Europe would have felt betrayed by Britain if we had failed to reach a deal. If we had betrayed our own national interest in not getting a deal, with whom would we have negotiated in the European Parliament and with whom would a future Tory Government negotiate in that Parliament?

Tony Blair: As I understand it, the position of the Opposition is that they would withdraw from the   Conservative party grouping in the European Parliament. That would have the most serious repercussions for this country's ability to make its influence felt, which is no doubt why the previous leaders of the Conservative party, including the shadow Foreign Secretary, refused to do it.

David Heathcoat-Amory: This descent by the Prime Minister from tough talking in advance to concessions and surrender is such a familiar path for his European policy that this latest humiliation is no surprise. But why will we pay twice the amount into a budgetary and control system in Brussels that is so riddled with corruption and inefficiency that the auditors have not signed it off for the past 11 years? Was that raised at the summit—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Tony Blair: The right hon. Gentleman and I   just have a fundamental disagreement about Europe. I happen to believe that having championed the cause of enlargement it would be absurd for this country to say that we were not prepared to pay for it. That is our position. He apparently wishes to support enlargement but would refuse to have anything to do with paying for it. I would say that that is a ridiculous position. Sometimes it is actually better to have a situation in which we work with our allies to secure a proper deal, which will mean—as I said earlier—that France will actually pay more than us in the difference between their net contributions in the next period compared with the last. It is better to do such a deal than to end up alienating every ally in Europe and getting nothing for this country.

Wayne David: As part of this agreement, west Wales and the Valleys will receive £1.3 billion in structural fund assistance over the next seven years. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that will be a tremendous boost to the Welsh economy?

Tony Blair: Of course, which is another reason why it is a good deal and I thank my hon. Friend for reminding me of it.

Nigel Dodds: I note that the Chancellor has left the Chamber. Is that because he wants to lock the Treasury against further raids by the Prime Minister or is it to find the £7 billion? Can the Prime Minister assist the Chancellor and the House by telling us which areas of public expenditure will be targeted for cuts as a result of his largesse in Brussels?

Tony Blair: From what the hon. Gentleman is saying and from what the Conservatives are saying, they would not pay anything towards the costs of enlargement—[Interruption.] The Conservative party really has to understand that there is a choice. If we agree with enlargement, and if we agree that enlargement means a transfer from the wealthy to the poor, given that we are a wealthy country, I simply ask in all logic: how can they say that all other wealthy countries should pay but we should not? That is not a sensible position.

Police Restructuring

[Relevant documents: the uncorrected minutes of evidence taken before the Welsh Affairs Committee on Tuesday 6 December, HC (2005–06) 751-i.]
	Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Alan Campbell.]

Charles Clarke: I am delighted that we are in a position today, as promised, to hold a debate in Government time on the police restructuring being considered, and which will cover all parts of the country.
	I want to emphasise that the debate is wholly informed by the needs of modern policing and the need to build strong and secure communities. That is the start and end point of the process that we have set out and I   shall give more detail during our discussions. Central to the approach is the issue of local support for the police and the consent and accountability of the local police, which have for centuries characterised policing in this country. I believe that our proposals strengthen rather than weaken those aspects.
	I begin with the rationale for change. Members on both sides of the House will recognise that the nature of crime is changing. It is the duty of Government to ensure that our police service is equipped to protect the public   and business from serious criminality as well as to provide effective neighbourhood policing. Both are increasingly related to each other in our modern society and both need structure.
	That is why the issue is not simply about redrawing the boundaries on a map, but about fundamental change in our approach to what Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary termed protective services, by which the inspectors mean such things as serious and organised crime, counter-terrorism and handling major incidents without detriment to local policing. Protecting the public requires the police and others to predict and   prevent rather than merely to react to serious criminality. That requires different approaches to policing from the traditional methods and gives particular priority to intelligence, which is at the core of dealing with serious and organised crime.

John Redwood: Is the Home Secretary aware that Thames Valley police authority told me today that it has no figures for the costs or benefits of a merger with Hampshire and the other option? The authority has no idea of the staff changes entailed—whether there will be staff losses or a requirement for more staff. Does not that show that the process is being rushed ridiculously? There can be no proper figures for consideration before 23 December, and asking the police to do that so rapidly takes them away from the local neighbourhood policing that we want.

Charles Clarke: It does not mean that in any respect whatever. I shall come to the points that the right hon. Gentleman raised about financing and time scale in a moment, and will take further interventions at that point.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Charles Clarke: I shall give way in a second, but I want to make some more progress.
	Starting in June 2004, Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary conducted an extensive examination of how effectively protective services are currently provided, and I pay tribute to Denis O'Connor and thank him for the work he did for the inspectorate. The inspectorate published its analysis, "Closing the Gap", in September. The inspectors' stark conclusion, based on their independent, police-led analysis of the circumstances in every force, was that the current structure of policing is
	"no longer fit for purpose".
	In their view, there was insufficient focus on the challenges posed by modern serious and organised crime, and they came to the conclusion that strategic forces offer "the best business solution" for the future.
	Faced with that clear, well-argued and independent police advice, I judged it essential to act rather than to ignore those proposals.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Charles Clarke: I said that I would give way in a moment.
	Without action to address the problem, the situation is likely to worsen, rather than improve. The problems identified by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary are those that we face now, not problems that might never materialise. That finding is endorsed by police leadership at the most senior levels.

Martin Salter: The Home Secretary will be aware that Thames Valley police force is an example of the successful amalgamation of three county-based police forces. Given the success of Thames Valley police as an effective operational unit, is he aware that not one single person in the Thames valley wants to go back to parochial county-based policing?

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is entirely right. He makes the powerful point that the police have always been up for addressing the process of change—quite rightly so. Our current policing structure has reflected the past assessment of such matters. The process through which we are now going is intended to address that in the same way.

Daniel Kawczynski: The Home Secretary said at the beginning of his speech that the process would be undertaken only with the consent of police forces. Paul West of West Mercia police authority categorically told the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), that he was against the measures, so will the Secretary of State take that view on board?

Charles Clarke: I will take every view on board. For precisely the reasons that I shall explain in a moment, I   want to hear the views of police authorities and chief constables so that I can assess the best course of action to follow.

Paddy Tipping: Her Majesty's inspectorate and the Home Secretary will know about the difficulties that Nottinghamshire police face: serious crime and high rates of homicide. Is that not a typical example of why we need to increase resilience to tackle the way in which the face of crime has changed over the past 30 years? Change is necessary now.

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is entirely correct. The case of the Nottinghamshire force gives us an excellent illustration of the situation. As a Member of Parliament who lobbied my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety and me on the matter, he will know about the need to get additional resilience into the Nottinghamshire force to address the problems that it faces. I am influenced by the terrible case of the murder of Thomas Marshall in Norfolk some 10 years ago. The way in which much of the Norfolk constabulary had to devote tremendous resources over a considerable time to the appalling murder meant that it thought that its ability to deal with other threats that   could have arisen might have been threatened. That is the precisely the sort of problem that must be addressed.

Peter Luff: Why have the   Government not given more consideration to the federation of forces option? May I draw the Home Secretary's attention to paragraph 1.11 of "Closing the Gap", which made it clear that
	"some smaller forces were almost as successful as the majority of larger forces, whilst two relatively large forces (5,000+ staff) received surprisingly low scores"?
	He has not made the case for strategic forces.

Charles Clarke: This is an interesting discussion. The hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that some people think that a form of federation would be a more effective way of dealing with aspects of the situation than strategic forces. I take the view—I think that I am right in saying that Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary takes the same view—that that is not the right approach, because if one considers the resources that are required to deal with threats of serious and organised crime, intelligence matters, drug dealing and people trafficking, one sees that a strategic capacity is needed, not simply a mutual aid-based capacity. That is the right solution.

Edward Balls: I understand that my   right hon. Friend must consider the difficult and   complex issues of terrorism, organised crime and drug trafficking. However, in my constituency and the   Wakefield district we have excellent leadership at   the district level—the basic command unit—and there is a shift towards community and neighbourhood policing due to the increase in the number of officers. Will he reassure me and my constituents that in any reform that he proposes, the BCU at the district level will remain as the main building block for neighbourhood and local policing?

Charles Clarke: I can give my hon. Friend that reassurance. West Yorkshire has been a leading force in developing the strength, resilience and leadership of BCU commanders not only in Wakefield but in other local authority areas in West Yorkshire, so my hon. Friend is right to focus on that matter. As I shall say in a second, that is why the BCU and the neighbourhood policing structure is central to the whole approach that we want to follow.

James Paice: The Home Secretary mentioned a murder that took place 10 years ago in Norfolk and its impact on the Norfolk force. Much more recently my constituency suffered the tragedy of the Soham murders, when the   Cambridgeshire force—one of the smallest in the country—brought in the services of officers from 21 other forces to help because it lacked the necessary capacity. That is an example of what could be achieved under the present arrangements. Surely it would be better to make the present system work effectively than to engage in the wholesale disruption that he proposes?

Charles Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is right to say that mutual aid is an essential part of the way in which our policing works. It has been seen not only after appalling tragedies such as the Soham murders, but after the 7/7 attacks in London, when the largest force in the   country—the Metropolitan police—relied on mutual aid for several aspects of its response. That is important and it will remain a feature of policing, but I maintain my strongly held view that a strategic approach is the right one.

Nick Palmer: I am grateful to the Home Secretary for taking another intervention. Does he accept that, in addition to the police and the   police authorities, the general public deserve to be consulted? My experience in Nottinghamshire tells me that, as well as good neighbourhood policing, the general public want the most efficient possible wide-scale policing against major crime, not a reactionary attachment to county boundaries, which criminals have long since ceased to respect, if they ever did.

Charles Clarke: I believe that people want precisely what my hon. Friend says they want: strong, vibrant, resilient neighbourhood policing teams without abstractions; strong basic command unit-based policing working with other authorities in other areas; and a strategic force that provides the necessary support to local policing so that local police are not distracted.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Charles Clarke: I will give way more, but I wish to make some progress first.
	I have made the central argument for change. HMIC's conclusion was that larger forces—those with at least 4,000 officers or 6,000 staff—are more likely to have the critical mass needed to cope with organised crime, terrorism and civil contingencies without abstracting from local policing. Furthermore, there is now no area of the country where we can afford to neglect protective services. Organised criminals operate in remote areas and rural communities as well as in urban centres. Drug traffickers take advantage of remote areas to site manufacturing operations and gangmasters use illegal immigrants in rural industries. Unfortunately, murders and other major incidents, although extremely rare, can and do occur in any part of the country.
	I decided to ask the police throughout the country to consider HMIC's conclusion and to make proposals this year. They are now considering that in detail. I argued that there were three key principles of the reform: to deliver improved protective services, to achieve it without taking resources from neighbourhood policing, and to modernise and reconfigure policing and the way in which it does business. The aim is to use the substantial investment that we have made in policing, which has increased by more than £3.7 billion since 1997, more effectively to deliver a better service.
	We want to achieve that in the most effective ways possible. Merging police forces will deliver economies of scale and put that investment to better use. Now, there is duplication in provision of some services but gaps in   others, and we can reduce the money spent on back-office functions and redirect it to strengthen front-line policing. Let me give an example. The police service now runs 43 separate finance departments, 43 press offices and 43 human resources departments, all of which do things their own way. There is no justification for continuing to spend the money when efficiencies are possible. To give another example, it is a clear duplication of effort for one region to have a total of 500 firearms officers spread between four forces, some located within 10 miles of one another, when combining them would allow skilled officers to be transferred to other areas when they are needed urgently.
	Larger strategic forces—I emphasise strategic—will be better able to afford specialist functions such as firearms units, murder investigation teams, sexual offences units and counter-terrorism teams, and they will be able to use them more efficiently. At the time of the inspection to which I have referred, only 13 of the 43 forces had fully resourced specialist murder units. Smaller forces will always find it difficult to provide that level of service since, by definition, they need it far less often. However, that means that when they do need it, the skills and experience are not there or have not been tested. It is in such situations that forces have to take officers from local policing to fill the gap. The creation of strategic forces will help to safeguard local policing against that, because they will have sufficient capacity and resilience to deal with major investigations or public order incidents without abstracting officers from neighbourhood policing teams.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: I am second to none in my admiration for my right hon. Friend. The logic of the argument is that we are moving towards a national police force. Is that what he intends?

Charles Clarke: If I am genuinely second to none in the admiration of my hon. Friend, I am in real trouble. [Interruption.] That is exactly the point coming from those on the Opposition Front Bench.
	I have rejected from the outset the suggestion of a national police force. Some serious organisations—the Police Superintendents Association, for example—have proposed that such a force be established. I think that that would be a dangerous development given the spirit of the police in this country, who have always relied on the principle of consent and on the operational independence of chief constables. Were there to be a national force, as there is in some other countries, there would be an entirely unhealthy relationship between Ministers and the operational commander of such a force. I have opposed the concept from the outset for that reason, so there is no plan to take that course. I give my hon. Friend that assurance.

Julian Brazier: In Kent, we have a force that is near the top of the league by most of the Government's measures. It handles a number of strategic assets including the channel tunnel and the port of Dover. Given that Kent meets the Government's criterion on total manning, both uniformed officers and civilians, may we have an assurance that the wishes as expressed by its police authority and its county council to keep Kent as a police force will be upheld?

Charles Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is right to point both to the effectiveness of the Kent police authority and the constabulary and to the general strategic size and importance of it in dealing with major issues. I say to him, as I say in relation to all particulars, that the Government will consider all proposals when they come before us. We will take all points of view seriously into account, including the one that the hon. Gentleman has just expressed.

Andrew Miller: May I give my right hon. Friend another point of view—from Cheshire? I agree with the strategy that he is setting out, but how can a strategic plan be predicated on a structure that in the north-west, for example, Greater Manchester has unilaterally declared itself to be outside? Is that not an illogical basis on which to develop a strategy?

Charles Clarke: I say with all courtesy to all forces in the north-west, including Greater Manchester, that no one can declare themselves unilaterally outside the approach that is being taken.

Andrew Miller: It has done it.

Charles Clarke: It does not have the ability to do that. As I said to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), we will consider all proposals that come from all forces. Some forces say that they can stand alone and that that is it. We shall consider those proposals extremely seriously. There are some forces—Greater Manchester is one—that can make such a case. There are no unilateral decisions in those areas.

Gerald Howarth: The Home Secretary says that he will listen to all points of view and that he wants to consider everything that has been put on the table, but he has set the deadline of Friday for police forces to come up with proposals. Furthermore, those forces that bend to his will are to be given a cash handout. If that is not a bribe, what the hell else is? In Hampshire, like the position of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), we have a splendid police authority that by 2007 will meet all the Home Secretary's strategic objectives. The county has a strong military presence where it needs special policing. If the right hon. Gentleman is really interested in listening to what is said throughout the country, he should extend the deadline well into the new year so that all of us in this place can discuss these matters properly.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. May I   remind the hon. Gentleman of the maxim in "Erskine May" on the use of parliamentary language?

Gerald Howarth: I am extremely grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I apologise.

Charles Clarke: On the issue of funding, we have established that fund precisely to meet the request from the Association of Police Authorities and others that we provide funding to deal with the issues that arise in that area.

Hugh Bayley: I readily acknowledge the economies of scale if forces merge that ought to release resources for front-line policing, but can the Home Secretary give me, as a Member representing a predominantly rural police force, an assurance that if that force merged with a metropolitan police force, resources would not be sucked from rural areas into big cities?

Charles Clarke: I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance. First, the Government's position, which was set out in the manifesto on which we fought the last election, aims to establish neighbourhood policing at the local level. Secondly, it establishes that the basic command unit—for example, the City of York—will take policing decisions in the locality, working with other agencies in the city. Thirdly—this is very important indeed and develops the argument that I   made a second ago—relatively small forces such as North Yorkshire are vulnerable by definition in the case of major incidents such as murder or a significant attack, which take resources away from neighbourhood policing. I can therefore give my hon. Friend the assurance that he is seeking.

John Greenway: The hon. Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) referred to North Yorkshire, which is England's biggest county. Several times the Home Secretary has referred to murder investigations. He will know that in 2004 there were two double murders in the vicinity of York. There   was one double murder in my constituency, and Mark Hobson was sent to prison in May this year. North Yorkshire police dealt with that crime, and the people of North Yorkshire have more confidence in the performance of the police locally than in the views of Her Majesty's chief inspector.

Charles Clarke: North Yorkshire police and forces throughout the country have an outstanding record in dealing with appalling crimes of the type that the hon.   Gentleman described. With his background in policing, he knows more than most of us in the House about the track record of police in dealing with such issues.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Mr. Secretary Clarke is replying to an intervention. Perhaps hon. Members would allow him to finish his response before seeking to intervene.

Charles Clarke: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) made his point very clearly, and everything that I say reinforces the capacity of individual forces to deal with the problem. However—and this is as true for North Yorkshire as it is for other forces—in the light of changed policing circumstances and the different forms of attack that now exist, it is necessary to strengthen that in the ways that I have described. I take seriously, as I   am sure the hon. Gentleman does, the views of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. Had I decided to ignore its recommendations, I would have been more vulnerable to legitimate attack from Members such as him who have a strong background in policing.

Emily Thornberry: Reference has been made to Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. Does my right hon. Friend agree with its statement that the current 43-force structure is
	"no longer fit for purpose"
	and is based on a structure established in the 1960s?

Charles Clarke: I agree, and referred to that statement earlier. My hon. Friend is quite right, however, to draw attention to it.

Owen Paterson: Is the Home Secretary aware of the serious doubts about the statistics behind "Closing the Gap"? Has he read the opinion of the professor of statistics at the university of Warwick, which was published today? He said:
	"The quality of statistical information gathered for the HMIC report . . . is questionable . . . The statistical treatment of the data collected is largely unjustified and appears open to criticism . . . The graphical presentation of the data is poor and trend lines could be misleading; the use of computer-produced statistical elaborations is unjustified . . . there has been minimum professional statistical science input".
	He concludes:
	"The conclusions drawn in respect of the 4,000 minimum force size almost totally ignore the variability of protective services performance at each force size, and no evidence is provided that this will be small at the 4,000 level. In short, there will be an unknown"—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. That is not supposed to be a speech, but an intervention.

Charles Clarke: I am sure that the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) will make his points when he makes his speech in the debate. The short answer is no I have not seen that report today—I will study it, of course—but I make the point again that it is   very clear that the evidence is absolutely straightforward. That is why HMIC has reached its view that strategic forces are the way to deal with such issues.

Peter Kilfoyle: I do not think that anyone would argue with the thrust of the Home Secretary's argument about efficiencies, but there appears to be a difference of view between the police authorities and the police who are charged with doing the job. I am sure that the Home Secretary would agree that there are people looking after their own positions throughout the country, but the big concern, which could defuse some of the issue, is about accountability. Under the new structure, how does he intend to ensure accountability in the new areas, given that metropolitan areas and counties may perhaps fuse?

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is right to say that there is a difference of opinion between some senior officers and some police authority members, although I draw no conclusion from that. Two key accountabilities will be enhanced by our proposals. First, neighbourhood policing teams will be established, whereby people who live in a patch will know the names of their police officers, their e-mail addresses, their phone numbers and how they operate. That is not already the case universally—I wish it were, but it is not—so we will establish that system. Secondly, at basic command unit level, a relationship of a different order will be established with the local authority. I accept substantially the case that we need to ensure that the proposals increase accountability. That is true, and it is what the proposals will do.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Charles Clarke: I want to make some more progress.

Douglas Hogg: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Charles Clarke: No, I will not give way. I want to make more progress.

Douglas Hogg: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Charles Clarke: No, I shall not. I have told the right hon. and learned Gentleman that twice. I will not give way to him at any point in the debate.

Douglas Hogg: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Of course I recognise that it is for the Home Secretary to determine whether or not to give way to any Member, but is it not extraordinary for a Secretary of State to say in advance that he is not proposing to give way to a certain Member?

Madam Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order for the occupant of the Chair. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman well knows, it is entirely up to the Minister at the Dispatch Box to determine to whom, if anyone, he gives way.

Charles Clarke: I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. My experience of the quality of interventions over the past five years from the right hon. and learned Gentleman leads me to believe that they would cause no substantial addition to the quality of the discussion.
	I want to make progress on the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley). I well understand the points that are being made about the threat to neighbourhood policing, about which people are fearful and concerned. That is why I give the assurances that forces in those neighbourhoods will stay there rather than be abstracted to other forces, or whatever. As I said, each neighbourhood, covering roughly the size of a couple of council wards, will have a dedicated team. Every resident will know the name of their local officers and their phone numbers and e-mail addresses and so on. They are essential elements of the proposals for neighbourhood policing and will be introduced in every part of the country by 2008.
	Alongside the force mergers we will introduce measures to strengthen accountability at basic command unit level in the context of the crime and disorder reduction partnership, where it will make a difference to everyone's life. At the level of the strategic forces that we are talking about, we will ensure greater accountability as well. I believe that the changes that I have proposed will provide a better police service.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Once again, will the House please settle down? It is in the gift of the Home Secretary to decide whether or not to give way. At the moment, he has said that he wishes to make some progress.

Charles Clarke: Throughout this process, I and HMIC believe that these changes will provide a better police service. That is why, in September, I invited police forces and police authorities to work up their own proposals and preferences for restructuring the service in the context of the HMIC report. I asked them to show how the changes that they proposed would deliver the step-change in the provision of protective services that I believe the whole country needs. Since the start of the process in September, forces and authorities have worked extremely hard to ensure that the reform has a solid evidence base and provides proper plans to deliver improvements in services. I understand the concerns raised in the House and by some forces about the timetable that has been set and about the potential pace of change. However, I should restate that the problems that we face will not go away. They exist right now and they need to be addressed.
	I want to state formally my gratitude to authorities and forces for their hard work and to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety for all that she has contributed. However, there is a great deal more to do. I understand that the time frames have been challenging. I have asked police authorities to submit preferred options for change by 23 December, along with draft costings of the business cases that support those options. I also recognise that, with the best will in the world, there will still be local issues that need further work and discussion. Any decisions will follow a period in January when my officials will work closely with police forces and authorities to refine the cases submitted on 23 December and to resolve these issues. However, I have to say that it is the Government's clear preference to move early to strategic forces given the medium-term and sustained value-for-money benefits of doing so and, most important of all, to remove the uncertainty that can be very damaging to morale.
	To support forces that are prepared to merge voluntarily, I will also look at further funding options in January, and I have written to the Association of Police Authorities on this matter.

Alan Beith: Will the Home Secretary deal with the questions that we cannot get an answer to in this time scale? What will happen in an area such as Northumberland—where the present police force size is adequate for the strategic purpose—to the precept that council tax payers will pay, which is generally lower than in other authorities, and to the representation of Northumberland on the police authority for the strategic police area, which might mean that only one person and possibly nobody at all is on the body that determines spending?

Charles Clarke: Both issues will be addressed in the context of the proposals that will come to me by the end of this year; both issues will be part of the continued discussion with forces, authorities and chief constables in that period; and, on both issues, I can give the right hon. Gentleman the assurance that his concerns will be given full weight as we get to the position that we need to get to.

Albert Owen: I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend is concentrating on local policing, on which many Members of Parliament are working in their local areas. In response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), he indicated that he was not moving towards a national police force, but that is exactly what he is doing in Wales. He talked about moving resources, so is it possible for those regional authorities now to make bids whereby they could make up the level 2 gap by increasing the budget rather than by spending all this money on restructuring?

Charles Clarke: With respect to my hon. Friend, I do not believe at the end of the day that the issues that are addressed in the HMIC report on the level 2 capacity can be dealt with purely through resourcing. There are important structural issues in many parts of the country, and they relate to different areas of priority and different areas of spending. However, I can give him the assurance, if that is what he is looking for, that if the Welsh forces were, for example, to come forward with a proposal, we would look at the pot that we have made available for giving money to help to address those particular issues.

Patrick Cormack: Will the Home Secretary please explain to the House why he is proceeding at such speed? This is the biggest shake-up in the police force for half a century and he ought to want to take the people of the counties of England and Wales with him. If he devoted six months, which is not a long time, to this process, he could probably have what he wants. However, he is driving fast and furiously without any regard to local concerns and local people. May we not have an extension of this ridiculously tight timetable?

Charles Clarke: Perhaps I should remind this very senior Member of the House that, under the law as it stands, if I were to propose a particular change covering, for example, Staffordshire that was not agreed and did not come forward on a voluntary basis, there would then be a legal requirement to go through a four-month consultation period during which anybody—be they individuals, local authorities or whoever—could make the observations that they wanted to make. Therefore, I do not think the charge that he makes that we are not allowing time for consultation in the event of changes is fairly and well made.

Paul Flynn: The Association of Police Authorities has estimated that because of the start-up cost plus equalisation the increase in council tax could be 30 per cent. in some areas, so we can probably rename the council tax as the police tax. Will the Home Secretary tell us who will pay those costs? Will it be police tax payers?

Charles Clarke: As my hon. Friend knows from our previous conversations about the matter, the figures that he is plucking out of the air have no substance. The basis on which such discussions should take place are the figures in the proposals that police forces put forward for us to think about, which will be placed in the public arena. That will allow us to have the discussion that my hon. Friend perfectly reasonably wants, but let us conduct it on the basis of actual figures rather than on a totally speculative basis.

Keith Simpson: Many hon. Members on both sides of the House understand the Home Secretary's argument about the requirement for strategic resources, but will he rethink the time scale? Norfolk police authority covers both of our constituencies, and it is unanimously in favour of one option on the grounds that it had better act quickly to avoid being dragged in. It had hoped to merge with Suffolk police authority and Cambridgeshire police authority, but unfortunately they are entirely opposed to the idea. The Home Secretary also knows that the regional assembly has unanimously voted against his proposals. Given the variety of options, will we see a uniform pattern at the end of the day or are we into chaos theory?

Charles Clarke: We are not into chaos theory in any respect, but I am not sure whether the uniformity that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned is the right approach. Some people have argued that the approach should be the same in each of the Government offices for the regions, but we have not said that, which is why we are asking police authorities and police forces to examine the matter in relation to their own areas.
	As I have said, I expect the cases, which I must consider by the end of December, to be robust and to show how mergers can lead to significant economies that can be reinvested in neighbourhood policing and protective services. As I said earlier in response to an intervention, I had that in mind when I responded to the Association of Police Authorities and decided to set aside £50 million of police capital funding for 2006–07 and up to a maximum of £75 million of police capital funding for 2007–08 to support authorities and forces committing to early—voluntary—mergers. The business cases that forces and authorities are now completing include information on financing and costs. The Home Office has provided considerable advice and guidance, including involving the independent Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, to ensure that this financial information is provided on a consistent and equal basis.
	Throughout January, my officials, supported by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and operational policing experts, will continue to work with forces and authorities to ensure that the business cases for reforms have been made and are designed to be cost-effective. This work will take place in January, and I expect to be in a position to make decisions as soon as possible. Again, I acknowledge that the time scales are challenging, but it is crucial that we press ahead to avoid a prolonged period of uncertainty, which could lead to loss of morale and distraction from the core task of protecting the public.
	There are other issues that we will need to resolve to make sure that mergers can progress smoothly. My officials are working with the Treasury, the Association of Police Authorities, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Welsh Assembly Government to reach agreement on future precepting arrangements. I cannot say today what the detailed outcome of that work will be, but the level of precept gathered in England and Wales as a whole will not rise. We will obviously consider ways in which the transition can be smoothed.
	In conclusion, there is an overwhelming case for reform, based not only on the professional judgment of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and the evidence presented in "Closing the Gap", but on the professional judgment of ACPO, which has consistently drawn attention over the past year to vulnerabilities that it perceives in the service that the police can provide at level 2. In the light of that, no responsible Government could refuse to act.
	Strategic forces provide the best solution to the problem of delivering strong protective services to all communities as efficiently as possible. The real measure of success will be not the number of forces that we end up with next year, but how well equipped we are in 10, 15 and 30 years' time to meet the two key demands of protecting the public and providing a police service that remains truly responsive to members of the public.

David Davis: The matter that we are debating—the prospective reduction of 43 police forces to 12—is enormously important. The constitutional independence of the police, their local accountability, their operational effectiveness, their cost-effectiveness, the stability of their finances, and their very identity with their local communities are all at risk. That is why the Association of Police Authorities rightly called for a full parliamentary debate on this important issue. In his recent letter to its chairman, the Home Secretary said that
	"there will be an opportunity for Parliament to debate in full the issues raised by the review on Monday 19 December".
	So what do we have today? A debate timed to fall after the formal meetings of most or all of the relevant police authorities, despite the Home Secretary's demand that the authorities meet his deadline at the end of this week, on Friday; and a debate held just before the Christmas recess, after a major prime ministerial statement and without a substantive vote. One might almost conclude that the Home Secretary does not want it to get much press coverage. This is hardly the full debate that the subject deserves. The Home Secretary should know that Conservative Members expect a much more extensive debate on the future of policing in the new year.
	We are not opposed to changing policing in Britain. We have long argued for reform and for a greater focus on neighbourhood policing. We are keen to work with the Government to find the best way to achieve that. We recognise that Britain faces growing threats from terrorism and organised crime that often require greater co-operation across forces. However, the Home Secretary would do well to heed the words of one chief constable who rightly said:
	"All serious and organised crime has a local base".
	It therefore requires a local response. That is why we are very concerned about plans to force mergers between forces that will inevitably make policing more remote from the people.

Patrick Cormack: Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that very early in the new year the official Opposition will ensure that this House has an opportunity to vote on the timetable for these measures?

David Davis: I give my hon. Friend the undertaking that we will ensure that we have the opportunity to vote on either the timetable or the substance of these measures, depending on where the Government have reached at that time.

Douglas Hogg: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

David Davis: Before I do, I want to say that in my 18 years in the House, I witnessed only one occasion on which a Minister, let alone a Cabinet Minister, refused to take an intervention from a Privy Councillor, and that led to an apology. I therefore give way to my right hon. and learned Friend.

Douglas Hogg: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his courtesy. Does he accept that the people of Lincolnshire are against amalgamation because they think that it would amount to a dilution of the policing in their county and a lack of response to their concerns by the police authority, which will be elsewhere? If the Home Secretary makes an affirmative resolution to bring about a compulsory merger of the Lincolnshire constabulary with an adjoining force, will my right hon. Friend join me, and I hope the other place, in opposing it?

David Davis: If that proposal is made over the heads of the people of Lincolnshire and without considering the views of the local authority and the local police force, of course we will oppose it.

John Redwood: This debate is about money and people—how we can afford the specialist skills that we need in our police force. Does my right hon. Friend therefore agree that it is extraordinary that the Government have given no firm figures on how much the proposal might cost or how it is going to be paid for? There is an idea that it might cost £500 million, but the figures cannot be based on any proper estimate because a big police force such as Thames Valley has not yet produced its numbers. Is it not a disgrace that we have such an unprepared debate?

David Davis: My right hon. Friend is right. In fact, it is a double disgrace—first, that those numbers are not available, and, secondly, that the Home Secretary appears to expect the Association of Police Authorities to find them by the end of this week, which is a singularly untenable proposal.

Several hon. Members: rose—

David Davis: I will give way in a moment.
	That is the core of the matter. We believe that this is all happening too fast. It is happening without serious thought about the consequences and it is being driven by the wrong motives. Rather than taking their time, the Government are trying to force the changes through almost without proper debate. Rather than being driven by operational effectiveness, the changes are being driven by a blind belief in centralisation that defies the facts. Rather than focusing on the needs of local people, they are being driven by an agenda of regionalisation that the Government continue to pursue against the will of the people. We welcome today's debate, but the Home Secretary has a long way to go before he proves the case for the changes that he is advocating.

Patrick Hall: I heard the right hon. Gentleman this morning on Radio 4 when he was very relaxed and talked about the amount of time that is being spent looking at the restructuring proposals. He said that not enough time was being spent on it, but he referred to the 1960s when there was a two-year royal commission followed by a two-year debate. I was not quite sure whether he thought that four years was sufficient. How long does he think should be devoted to this process now?

David Davis: I will come to exactly that point and give exactly the answer that the hon. Gentleman wants shortly.

Peter Luff: Does my right hon. Friend share my amazement that the original proposals, on the basis of which restructuring will be carried forward, were published in the middle of the parliamentary recess, and that the process for specific implementation was begun in the parliamentary recess? Should we not be having two debates: one today on the principle of police restructuring, and one next year on how it will be conducted in practice?

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right. The whole approach has been entirely insufficient from a parliamentary point of view.

Several hon. Members: rose—

David Davis: The options are enormous. I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key).

Robert Key: When it comes to operational policing, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that this debate is being held as though only one police force operates in this country—the home police forces of the counties? It does not. Eight different police forces operate in my constituency at any one time, including the British Transport police and a host of others, most significantly the Ministry of Defence police, and we cannot possibly sensibly consider police reform unless we consider the interface of all police forces. In garrison towns around my constituency there is an everyday working relationship between such forces, as there is in Colchester—the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) is not here but I know that he would agree—and in Aldershot, represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), and we must take that into account if we are to have sensible operational results.

David Davis: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the complexity of the problem, and it brings me to my next point.
	Opposition Members have long had a clear view of the kind of reform that our police service needs. We want to see genuine neighbourhood policing that is responsive to the needs of local people. We want the police to be genuinely accountable to the people whom they serve, which is why we continue to believe in the concept of elected police commissioners. Evidence suggests that smaller policing units are the most effective. Recent research from the Policy Exchange think-tank states that
	"smaller forces, with a strong commitment to visible policing, are among the most successful at cutting crime and providing public reassurance."
	In the Policy Exchange's ranking of police forces, the smaller forces, such as Dyfed-Powys, Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire and Dorset, came out on top. That evidence accords with the Home Office's own performance assessments for 2004–05, which show that three of the top five performing police forces in Britain have fewer than 4,000 officers. That evidence mirrors international experience.

John Denham: rose—

David Davis: I will give way in one moment.
	The greatest and most high-profile success in tackling crime in recent years is found in American cities. They managed to cut crime by more than half in just 10 years. How? They adopted a system of locally managed, directed and financed policing. With all that evidence to hand, we believe in retaining and enhancing the connection between local police and local people.

Tom Levitt: I was going to ask the right hon. Gentleman if that was indeed still the Opposition's policy, as we do not seem to have heard much of it over the past few months. Is not what he is describing exactly what the Home Secretary suggested—enhanced strengths for basic command units, neighbourhood forums and so on? How many commissioners was he anticipating, and would there be any strategic co-ordination of their work? If they are to be truly independent, he would have no strategic overlay, and I am sure that that is not sensible.

David Davis: That is a very simplistic point that barely deserves response. Yes, we are committed to elected commissioners, and, yes, they will be expected to respond to strategic issues.
	As the House will know, the Government want to move—

John Denham: rose—

David Davis: I will give way in a moment.
	As the House will know, the Government want to move in the opposite direction. Fuelled by the O'Connor report, on which the current debate is based, the Home Secretary proposes to replace many existing constabularies with larger and more remote police forces. He justifies that with his now familiar claim that it is necessary to tackle the new terrorist threat. That argument, it seems, can cover a multitude of sins.
	Should the proposal go ahead, however? We fear that it will be the thin end of the wedge—the first step down the road to making all policing more remote and less responsive to local people.

Philip Davies: The Home Secretary, as my right hon. Friend will have heard, said that he was prepared to consider all options. However, West Yorkshire police force is large enough to meet the Home Secretary's requirement. The chairman of the police authority, a Labour councillor, is opposed to the move, yet the Home Secretary has already ruled out the possibility of West Yorkshire police remaining independent. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that shows that the consultation is a sham, and that it is about driving the   Deputy Prime Minister's agenda of regional government by stealth?

David Davis: If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not return to a previous incarnation as the shadow of the Deputy Prime Minister—an interesting concept in its own right.
	In an earlier debate, the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Frank Cook), whom I cannot see in the Chamber, was vocal on this subject. He quoted the   report's author, Denis O'Connor, as saying:
	"I was asked to put forward a protective services argument, not a critical assessment of forces".
	That suggests that the Home Secretary was trying to use his report as something that it is not. As so often, the Government seem to have come to a decision and then tried to find the evidence to support it. Perhaps that is why the Home Secretary was so quick to decide which of the five options outlined in the report he preferred.
	The Home Secretary supports the proposed move to fewer strategic forces. There was absolutely no mention of that in the Labour party's election manifesto earlier this year, perhaps because it knew how unpopular that would be. One opinion poll, conducted by MORI for the Cleveland force, found that public support for the plan was just 8 per cent. A similar poll for the Cumbrian force found that a majority were against the merger proposal. In the earlier debate in Westminster Hall, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) reported how his police force in Hampshire had told him:
	"At an independently run, public focus group consultation event held with residents, on November 19th our residents were unanimous across all groups that Hampshire Constabulary should not be amalgamated and should remain a single force."
	There has been burgeoning concern across the country, as people have come to realise that their local police force might disappear.

John Denham: May we return briefly to the question of the assessment of police forces, because the right hon. Gentleman referred to the police performance assessment framework? He will be aware, as I am, that that framework, though robust, does not effectively measure level 2 crime, cross-border crime and serious crime. By far the strongest case for police service reorganisation is that it will provide the ability to deal with that type of crime. Will he tell the House what size of police force he believes is necessary to provide the critical mass of officers and support staff to deal with that type of crime?

David Davis: The right hon. Gentleman makes the mistake that his Government make—the idea that one size fits all simply does not work. The clear point that I   will make, with which I think he will agree when he thinks about it, is that in order to address level 2 crime—the serious crimes that we are talking about—we should not jeopardise the way in which the police deal with so-called volume crimes. There are methods of dealing with level 2 crime that do not jeopardise the police's normal day-to-day business. I shall return to that point in a moment.

William Cash: Does my right hon.   Friend accept that he is completely right in concentrating on the localisation of police forces? In the context of Staffordshire, for example, nothing would be worse than to amalgamate our force with other forces, because the nature of crime that is committed in Staffordshire is completely different from that in the west midlands as a whole?

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right, and he is right to point out that I am right. The point is simple. Some of the proposed new forces are simply too huge to be as effective as those that they would replace.

Emily Thornberry: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: In a moment.
	If the proposed mergers in the south-east proceed, Kent officers could be closer to Calais than to their new   regional headquarters.—[Interruption.] Labour Members obviously think that that is a good idea. Some officers in the proposed south-west regional force would have to drive for five hours to reach their new regional base. Officers in the north-west would have to travel for two and a half hours from one side of their area to the other. As was pointed out earlier, some officers in Wales would have to travel for about five hours to visit their headquarters in Cardiff. We would accept that if we thought that there would be genuine benefits for the local community, but, as I have said, all the evidence demonstrates that the best police forces are the smallest because they are able to respond to the needs of the local community.

Mark Harper: Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary noted, with regard specifically to level 2 criminality, that Gloucestershire constabulary was of very high quality, had a comprehensive level 2 capability and had led development of a comprehensive information system, thus proving that smaller forces are perfectly capable of dealing with challenging and complex issues.

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right. The Gloucestershire force is a good example of smaller forces' coping very well. Moreover, there is nothing to stop forces from co-operating, as my hon. Friend's chief constable has pointed out. It is entirely right that they should co-operate, but it is not right that they should be forced to amalgamate or to merge.

Stephen O'Brien: Has my right hon. Friend received any adequate explanation, or indeed any explanation at all, from the Government of why, if we have to go down this route—to which I object—rather than retaining Cheshire as it is, forces that are already collaborating effectively cannot collaborate with forces across national boundaries in north Wales, where we collaborate most effectively, or indeed with forces in north Shropshire, where policing demands and threats are more akin to those in Cheshire than those in Merseyside or Manchester, which have unilaterally rejected any merger with Cheshire anyway?

David Davis: The Home Secretary has not come up with such a proposal. The one thing that he did say earlier, when it was pointed out that Manchester had refused to be involved, was—in effect—that it would do as it was told. That principle, in fact, underlies the whole proposal: police forces and police authorities will do as they are told.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Is my right hon. Friend aware that our excellent chief constable of Gloucestershire, Dr. Tim Brain, told me in a letter that any forced amalgamations were likely to have a significant impact on the Crown Prosecution Service, the probation service, the combined court service and the youth offending service? The whole matter goes much deeper than has been suggested. There will be much more reorganisation, and it will cost much more than the £500 million to £600 million estimated by the Association of Police Authorities.

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right. It should be borne in mind that his chief constable is also the representative of the Association of Chief Police Officers responsible for resources, and probably understands the issues better than most.

Charles Walker: Earlier this week Ian Laidlaw-Dickson, the Labour chairman of Hertfordshire police authority, wrote to Hertfordshire Members:
	"This authority regrets the undue haste with which it has been asked to make decisions on the future of policing in Hertfordshire. We will not be pushed or bribed into making snap decisions."
	We in Hertfordshire want to know what the rush is. Are we going into something that we shall regret at our leisure?

David Davis: Almost certainly, if the Home Secretary proceeds as he intends. My hon. Friend has raised another point, however. The words of a Labour chairman have had the interesting effect of uniting Conservative, Labour and Liberal police authority chairmen up and down the country against the haste, the method and the approach that are proposed.

Quentin Davies: Does my right hon. Friend appreciate that as Lincolnshire has a much lower crime rate than the counties with which the Government propose we should be merged, if the merger takes place policing effort in Lincolnshire will in future target an average crime level that is currently much higher than ours? There will therefore be little pressure on the police who are still in Lincolnshire to improve their performance. Rather, they will be under a great deal of pressure to switch resources from what will be viewed as a lower-crime area in Lincolnshire to other parts of the merged police force area.

David Davis: My hon. Friend makes a good point about very large police authority areas. The simple truth is that we cannot be sure, particularly where there is a mix of rural and urban areas, that resources will not be moved from low-crime to high-crime areas. That is one of the concerns that the Home Secretary has not addressed.

Several hon. Members: rose—

David Davis: I apologise for keeping the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) waiting for so long.

Emily Thornberry: It is clear that, in respect of policing, Conservatives believe that small is good and local is best, so is it their view that we need more than the present 43 police authorities? If so, would not their policy cost more than the 56 per cent. increase in spending that has been invested over the last six years?

David Davis: Labour Members basically fall into two groups—the Whips' narks and the people who really care about the issue. [Interruption.]

Edward Balls: rose—

David Davis: In this particular case, of course, there is no doubt about the classification.

Edward Balls: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for confirming that I am one of the people who really cares, particularly about policing in my constituency. It is because I care that I have taken the trouble to consult local police leaders and it is clear to me, unlike to Conservative Members, that they are in favour of reform. Having spoken to them in detail, I know that they are completely opposed to the idea of electing local police chiefs, which would be a fast track to the politicisation of the police at a local level. Is the right hon. Gentleman really proposing that as a serious reform, or is it just a hangover from the last manifesto?

David Davis: I will tell him in a few moments what I   believe about localism, but I will say that the hon. Gentleman worked in the Treasury during a period in which our police forces were starved of cash over the years—[Interruption.] I am quite happy to debate the matter with the hon. Member for Normanton (Ed   Balls). Perhaps we could debate what happened to the police precept during the Government's term of office and how huge amounts were raised from local people, which were more than enough to pay for all the policing increases during the entire period of the Labour Government. They, and particularly the hon. Member for Normanton, should not be making any great claims about how much money they put up.

Several hon. Members: rose—

David Davis: If my hon. Friends will forgive me, I would like to make a little progress before taking another barrage of interventions. [Interruption.] Well, welcome to the House of Commons.
	The Home Secretary has claimed that local policing will remain through the basic command units, which he says are accountable, but there is not true accountability there at all. He obviously does not understand the difference between accountability and consultation, which are indeed rather different. The BCUs take their direction from above and report to those above them. Local people have no control over them whatever. What happens if the BCUs do something wrong? Can they be fired? No. Can they be replaced? No. Can they be held to account in any way by the people they serve? No. The Home Secretary says that he desires the establishment of mechanisms that will effectively hold BCU commanders to account, but then he admits that those mechanisms will be non-statutory. It is not enough for him to "desire" accountability; there must be a formal mechanism to put local accountability in place.
	The Government have shown minimal real interest in the issue—and we know why. There is a wider agenda behind the Government's plan. We can already see how their failed regionalisation agenda is being introduced through the back door. What began in planning is now filtering through to the emergency services. The ambulance service is being reorganised, as is the fire service, and the police are simply the latest body to face the zeal of the Government's great drive towards regionalisation.

Ian Lucas: Is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting that Denis O'Connor is part of this conspiracy?

David Davis: What Denis O'Connor has demonstrated is that if the Government ask the question carefully enough, it determines the answer that they get. As is demonstrated in this case, it is as simple as that. I will come back to Mr. O'Connor's comments on that very point.

Jeremy Wright: Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is no real reason why Warwickshire police force—my local police force—should not be permitted to amalgamate, if that is the appropriate solution for it, with counties such as Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, except that they cross regional government boundaries and that doing so does not fit in with the Government's regional government agenda?

David Davis: My hon. Friend makes the point exactly. If this reform is not driven by a regional agenda, why would Hampshire police authority be forbidden from amalgamating with neighbouring Dorset or Wiltshire forces? The answer is that they would then cross arbitrary Government office boundaries. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) mentioned Warwickshire police force, which is the smallest force in the country outside the City of London's. As it said in an early response to the report:
	"The Home Secretary has made it clear that the restructuring of forces has to take place within existing regional boundaries".
	If it is so important that we create larger strategic forces to fight terrorism and organised crime, why should we let regional boundaries dictate how those forces are formed? Are criminals going mysteriously to respect regional boundaries? If this reform is truly about operational effectiveness, it should be solely about doing what is most effective—not about fitting the Government's discredited, one-size-fits-all prejudices and preconceptions. The Government's plans for regional government were defeated soundly in a referendum of the people; it is time that they accepted that fact, rather than trying to implement them through the back door.

Tom Levitt: Pausing only to note that it was the Conservatives who established the current regional boundaries, I want to return to the question of accountability. The right hon. Gentleman will doubtless agree that the person responsible for policing in a particular area should make policing his priority. If we have elected commissioners at basic command unit level who are elected once every four years—my Tory opponent referred to that proposal at the last election—regardless of what level they are at, one year will be spent playing to the gallery in the run-up to the next election, rather than being spent putting policing matters first.

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman gives an interesting description of his own job and the way in which he fills it—playing to the gallery every four years. I am sure that his local papers will have fun with that. That is not our policy: we believe in district commissioners at force level, rather than at BCU level. Perhaps he should read our manifesto, instead of believing bits of his own propaganda.
	There may be a case for amalgamation in some parts of the country—

Charles Clarke: Just to make sure that I heard the right hon. Gentleman correctly during that last exchange, does he stand by the manifesto commitment of having an elected leader of each force in the country? Is that correct?

David Davis: It is correct that the manifesto said that we would have an elected police commissioner, and there is nothing wrong with that. There may be a case—[Interruption.] Is the right Home Secretary having difficulty hearing? The answer to his question was yes.
	We accept that there may be a case for amalgamation in some parts of the country; our concern is that the Government are forcing it on police forces that do not want or need it. As one chief constable said:
	"There's not been enough critical examination of the report. Restructuring may be exactly what two or three forces in one part of the country need and may make totally sound sense. But it does not follow that it needs to work like that in every part of the country".
	The speed with which this restructuring is being done is one of our greatest concerns. As that same chief constable outlined:
	"This is going to be the most profound change since the modern police service was created in 1829. Maybe it is not necessary to have a two-year royal commission now, but a debate—not even much of a debate—that is based upon a report which took three months to write and which we have really only been given a month to respond to, is just too hasty".
	The last time such a change was proposed, a royal commission was indeed established. As was pointed out in an earlier intervention, it was established in 1960 and reported in 1962, and its recommendations were put in place between 1964 and 1965. This time, the report was called for in June and published in September, and it will be implemented—if the Government get their way—as early as next year. As the Labour chairman—another Labour chairman—of Cheshire police authority, Mr. Peter Nurse, told the Home Secretary,
	"Your timetable is so absurd that it is impossible for us to have a meaningful dialogue with our communities and for us to fully appraise what is the best structure for policing in this area that not only effectively tackles those serious criminals in our midst but also protects our neighbourhood."
	That is a comment from a Labour chairman of a police authority.
	The speed leaves many questions unresolved. One of the most important of those is cost.

Bob Spink: Has my right hon. Friend had any indication from the Home Secretary of the impact on the council tax police precept? Does he agree with the figures that have been suggested for the merger of Essex police force, which might put up the police precept by 20 or 30 per cent.?

David Davis: The Home Secretary was asked that question in an intervention, but he dismissed two important assessments of the issue as guesswork. I shall now address it in some detail. The O'Connor report, on which the Home Secretary bases his argument, is 113 pages long, of which just one and a half pages cover how the merged forces will deliver savings. A figure of   £70 million is asserted, but is completely unsubstantiated. The report says that the change "could save" some £70 million in the long run, but equally it might not. There is every chance that costs will go up, not down, especially information technology costs in which both the Home Office and the police do not have a brilliant track record.
	If nothing else, all experience shows that the process of amalgamation will be a ferociously disruptive and distracting exercise, for probably several years, during which time neither the terrorists nor the criminals will take a rest. The draft calculations in the report are far from convincing, and so is the evidence from history.
	I am sure that many hon. Members will remember what happened on a previous occasion when a Labour Government amalgamated two institutions to try to drive up standards and cost-effectiveness. They took one poorly run car company and one very successful international lorry company, put them into one and created a disaster called British Leyland. The history of amalgamations does not inspire confidence. Rather than raising the average of all, they often pull successful institutions down. Even if the projected operational and cost improvements can be achieved, it is clear that they could also be achieved through the simpler federated structure, with forces providing mutual support and co-operation. That would have the added benefit of avoiding heavy up-front costs.

Henry Bellingham: My right hon. Friend will be aware that after the Tony   Martin case there were several cross-border policing issues. Norfolk constabulary entered into a federation with Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, which has achieved a great deal. It meets many of the aspirations in the inspectorate's report. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Home Secretary has not answered the question that was put to him about federation and that that is surprising, given that he is a Norfolk MP?

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right. When the Home Secretary was questioned on that point, he dismissed federation as not having sufficient strategic direction. However, within a couple of minutes, he gave an example of four different armed response units being within 10 miles of one another. That is precisely the situation in which a federated solution would provide both economy and an improvement in effectiveness without any need for a strategic direction.

Mark Francois: My right hon. Friend is, like me, an ex-Territorial Army soldier and will appreciate an analogy with the armed forces. It is possible for different regiments to work together—the British Army does that all the time at brigade and divisional level—but they do not need to be merged into one super regiment to achieve efficiency. If it can work for the armed forces, why cannot it work for the police?

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right. Ministers are obsessed by the idea of scale economies, without realising that scale can bring real disadvantages to an organisation that is supposed to be, in some part, representative of the local community.

Mark Oaten: The right hon. Gentleman has set out a case for closer co-operation between various forces. Would he also consider using existing national organisations, such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency, as resources to be called on by local forces if they need help?

David Davis: Of course, SOCA could be used in that way. As has been said many times in this debate, when extra resources, expertise or support are needed, it is commonplace for it to be forthcoming. The Home Secretary mentioned 7 July and the 352 officers from other forces who came to London—the biggest of our forces—to help out. Just under a year ago, after the tsunami disaster, when the Metropolitan police led our end of the recovery operation from a base in Hendon, there were hundreds of people from other forces, both volunteers and formally seconded officers. That is normal. I would expect an organisation such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency to give strategic direction, assistance and intelligence to a federated structure, especially the lead player on terrorism or serious crime in such a structure. That is how the process would work, if there was a rational solution rather than one driven by the Government's prejudices.

Robert Walter: On anti-terrorism, one of the best examples is the regular Dorset police operation to police the party conferences. It is one of the smallest police authorities but it brings in resources from neighbouring authorities on a co-operative basis without the need for a regional superstructure.

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right. Dorset provides us with a great number of examples, in terms of who the force would prefer to amalgamate with, as a highly efficient and relatively small force. That one county manages to defy almost every precept that the Home Secretary puts up.
	The O'Connor report admits that reorganisation is "bound" to entail up-front costs. It states that they "cannot be avoided". In view of that warning, did not it occur to the Government that it might be a good idea to find out what the costs might be before they demanded that amalgamation proceed? That job has been left to police authorities. The estimates are as wide ranging as they are disturbing. Figures of £25 million or £30 million have been suggested simply to amalgamate the IT systems of two neighbouring forces. The hon. Member for Stockton, North has been vocal about that. His local force in Cleveland was told that it would have to merge with Durham and Northumbria. The authority thinks that it would have to borrow £50 million to pay for that. Servicing the loan will cost £5 million a year.
	Some forces will have to borrow even more. I have before me a memo from Leicestershire police authority, which puts the cost of amalgamation to create an east midlands regional force at more than £100 million, with ongoing costs—not ongoing savings—of between £30 million and £52 million.

Philip Hollobone: I very much confirm the figures that my right hon. Friend has just read out. Is he aware that Northamptonshire police authority, which is being threatened with merger with the east midlands force, confirms that no efficiency savings have been identified to cover the costs of the merger proposals, so there is a direct threat to the roll-out of neighbourhood policing?

David Davis: My hon. Friend demonstrates that there are only two places for the money to come from—a point to which I will return; it will either come from the pockets of council tax payers or current policing. Both options are unacceptable.
	The chief constable of Gloucestershire, who has already received honourable mention from a number of my colleagues, is ACPO's head of finance and resourcing. He estimates the total set-up cost as £500 million. The Association of Police Authorities assesses it at between £500 million and £600 million. I suspect that the cost of the process will be like that for the infamous identity card scheme: the harder we look at it, the more expensive it gets.
	The full cost could be astronomical, yet we are told by the head of the police resources unit at the Home Office that the
	"Government does not have the money"
	to pay for it. However, it is amazing what Ministers can do when their backs are against the wall. After the APA refused to meet the Home Secretary's rushed deadline of 23 December he suddenly found £50 million for next year and £75 million for the year after, in a rather clumsy attempt to bribe forces to accept his merger plans without question. The APA—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would like to reconsider the words he has just used.

David Davis: That was a quote from the APA, Madam Deputy Speaker, not my words, but if I offended the House I withdraw them.
	The APA was rightly outraged. In its response, "Policing not for Sale", it condemned the Home Secretary's attempt to—I am sorry, it is the same word: how can I put it?—"influence" police authorities into abolishing local police forces. Its chairman, Bob Jones, said that
	"we will not be bought off . . . It is disappointing that the Home Secretary is now trying to bribe"—
	I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker—
	"some police authorities to merge their local police forces at the expense of those police authorities who still have serious concerns about whether this will deliver the best policing for local people".
	Even with the Home Secretary's rather cack-handed attempt to influence opinion, the shortfall in funding will be massive. There are only two ways to fill the gap: borrow the money, or raise it through a higher precept on the council tax. It is clear that the cost of the exercise will fall on council tax payers, and that is just one reason why the APA opposes the Government's plan. As its highly critical statement of 7 December put it:
	"the APA does not accept that HMIC's Report 'Closing the Gap' provides a complete or comprehensive business case for the creation of strategic forces and   . . . the APA will urgently explore alternative models, such as a Federated approach to establish if these offer a quicker, more cost effective approach to improve protective policing services".
	I welcome that approach. It makes sense to explore alternative options, especially when the O'Connor report itself proposed them.
	Why is the Home Secretary so hostile to federation? He says that a "compelling case" for federation has not been made, but does he seriously contend that he has made a compelling case for amalgamation? Alternative options must be explored objectively and costed properly, not summarily ruled out because they do not fit the Government's regional blueprint.
	My survey of police authorities, which was conducted last week, revealed overwhelming opposition to the Government's plans. Most authorities cited the speed and cost of the mergers as a major factor behind their opposition, together with worries about the lack of accountability.

Crispin Blunt: In Surrey, central Government support for the police has reduced from 86 per cent. of their budget in 1997 to 55 per cent. of their budget. The remainder has been made up by Surrey council tax payers. Will my right hon. Friend explain why on earth Surrey council tax payers should continue to bear that burden—and the increased burden due to the cost of the amalgamation—when the police force will not be theirs?

David Davis: My hon. Friend makes a good point that reinforces my earlier comment that the majority of the money that has been spent on increasing the number of police on the street has come from local council tax payers, not the Government.

Julian Lewis: In supporting what my right hon. Friend said earlier, may I point out that it has been reported today that the chairman of Hampshire police authority—I apologise in advance for using these words again, Madam Deputy Speaker—has stated:
	"I am absolutely disgusted with the Home Secretary for his blatant attempt to bribe police authorities into accepting voluntary mergers . . . This surely illustrates how police authorities across the country have got him running scared by standing together in protest against reforming the structure of policing in England and Wales"?
	Will my right hon. Friend take this opportunity to encourage police forces throughout the country not to be divided one against the other due to the offer of money if they agree to something with which they disagree in an impossibly short time scale?

David Davis: Of course I will do that, but I will also encourage forces to try to take a rational approach. What is wrong with the Government's approach is its sheer speed, haste and thoughtlessness. If they had come to the House with a deliberate plan of consultation and a way in which the various options and costs could be worked out, the response would have been completely different from what we are seeing today.

Tom Levitt: rose—

Paddy Tipping: rose—

David Davis: I have given way to the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) twice, so I give way to the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping).

Paddy Tipping: The right hon. Gentleman has a distinguished record as a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. Given that there are 43 different police authorities and forces, is he really telling the House that there is no scope for efficiency savings? Surely we should examine such efficiency savings carefully and look at bigger organisations. Yes, there will be up-front costs due to reorganisation, but he must accept that such a way forward could reduce costs in the long term.

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman is right that I   served as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. No Opposition Member—or any Labour Member, I think—would say that there is no scope for improving the efficiency of our police force. That is why every party stood at the last election on reform plans of one sort or another, although notably the Government did not have this reform plan in their manifesto.
	When I started as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, I told the National Audit Office that the Committee and the NAO had the three requirements of examining economy, efficiency and effectiveness. Effectiveness is the issue at play here because we are considering the responsiveness and effectiveness of our police forces as they serve their local communities. That will not be advanced by replacing effective police forces, some of which are very efficient, with super-forces of an enormous size.

Peter Bottomley: My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) will be able to talk about the reaction of Sussex police authority and will probably confirm that not a single person has written to any Sussex MP to say that they are in favour of the changes. Does my right hon. Friend anticipate that if the Audit Commission or the National Audit Office examined the spending that the Home Secretary contemplates and considered what would happen if it were all spent on improving the strategic ability of our police forces, they would find that we would get far better value for money than we would by spending most of the money on changing uniforms and IT systems earlier than would naturally happen?

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right. I can think of many ways of spending £500 million to improve the security of this country's citizens that would come way ahead of the proposal before the House.

Kevan Jones: rose—

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman has not had the chance to intervene, so I will give way to him. I am conscious of how I am filling the pages of local newspapers with hon. Members' quotes.

Kevan Jones: Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify how much his suggestion of having elected regional police commissioners or local sheriffs would add to the cost of local policing?

David Davis: It would add next to nothing to the cost, but add enormously to the effectiveness, as I said earlier.

Tom Levitt: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I   have given up on filling local newspaper pages—least of all with that sort of drivel, anyway. I have heard him twice already.
	I hope that the Government will accept that they have handled the debate appallingly, which is why we are discussing such an important matter in the last week before Christmas, which is a week in which there will be   no votes. Frankly, as the chief constable of Dyfed-Powys police said—this weekend, I think—the Government's plans are "verging on a shambles".
	The Home Secretary needs to pause and reflect on the full implications of his proposals. We are not opposed to any change to the existing structure of 43 police forces, but we think that there are serious problems with the current proposal. It will make policing remote when we should be making it local. It will make policing unaccountable when we should be giving people greater control. It threatens massive costs for no extra benefits, and it is driven by a regional agenda that has already been rejected by the British people. Quite simply, the proposal seems to be an attempt to meet a resources problem with an organisational solution. We should be designing the right organisation and then finding the resources to implement it. It would be a tragedy if we sacrificed good and effective policing on the altar of regional dogma. It will be a tragedy if the Government push through this hasty, ill-considered, costly, disruptive and dangerous plan.
	I want to say something personally to the Home Secretary because I have a great deal of regard for him. This is an extremely important constitutional, policing and security issue. There will be no vote today because this is an Adjournment debate, but I make a plea to him. He has in his hands something that is very important to the future of British life. Will he please think again? Will he go back to the Home Office and reconsider his timetable? He could take just six months to consult properly—not four years—and get the figures and assessments right, and then come back to put a proper proposal for policing in Britain before the House of Commons.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. May I remind all right hon. and hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches?

John Denham: The debate is important, but I found the speech of the right   hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) rather disappointing. I try, in my position as Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, to avoid being partisan in these debates, but I tell those of my colleagues who might have been worried about a newly revitalised Conservative party that is preparing for government that one of the measures of a party that is   preparing for government is the ability of its Front-Bench spokesmen to turn around to Members behind them and say, "I'm sorry. I'm not going to let you say that you can promise everything that your constituents want to hear." The real problem with the Opposition's position is that there are serious issues to do with whether our police service is effectively structured to deal with some of our most serious crime, but the right hon. Gentleman failed to deal with those issues so that his Back Benchers can go back to their constituencies and put out a press release saying, "I   called for no change in our area." That is a great shame, because there is a serious debate to be had on the process being undertaken by the Government and the way in which they are handling it. I am surprised to hear the major Opposition party challenge the fundamental basis of the Government's proposal. We need serious reorganisation.

David Davis: The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting but false point. Does he disagree with the proposition that we should take a sensible time—six months or so—to cost the proposals, work out their real consequences and consult the people involved to ensure that we get a decent and stable outcome?

John Denham: I will make points about the timing, the consultation and the information that is necessary in just a moment, but the right hon. Gentleman needs to confront one fact. When I intervened on him on police performance, he swept aside the argument that larger police forces are necessary to tackle level 2 crime—serious and organised crime. I was a Police Minister for two years and, in my experience, the overwhelming weight of professional opinion in the police service was that larger police forces were needed to produce the capacity to deal effectively with such crime. When I was a Police Minister—which was only a couple of years ago—ACPO adopted a report produced by its then president, Sir David Phillips, who I believe is still head of the National Centre for Policing Excellence, which called for strategic forces of 5,000 officers. That view did not emerge from the report issued earlier this year by HMIC—it has been the professional consensus of policing in this country for some time.
	The reasons are clear. If there are to be sufficient officers to deliver an effective neighbourhood policing service without abstractions continually taking officers off the street, we need sufficient officers and support staff to concentrate on drug running, people trafficking, serious organised crime and fraud. We know from the analysis that has been provided that the vast majority of serious criminal gangs go untouched by the attentions of most police forces in this country.

David Taylor: Does my right hon. Friend understand the scepticism of people in Leicestershire about the idea that there is a magic number of 4,000 or 5,000 officers that will guarantee the protective services that he is describing? The reputation of the Leicestershire force, which numbers 2,300 people, for accessibility, openness and responsiveness could be weakened or lost by resources being transferred to counties to the north of Leicestershire such as Nottinghamshire, where crime is   a serious problem. Can he understand their nervousness?

John Denham: I can understand the nervousness and I   think that Members have a responsibility not to feed it. I say two things to my hon. Friend. First, I believe that small forces will find it difficult to contribute to efforts to tackle serious and organised crime. The cost of that failure might not be immediately apparent within the boundaries of that police force area, but a weakness will be created in the capacity of policing across England and Wales to tackle organised crime. Secondly, I can see no reason why larger police forces should lose local responsiveness. I have heard hon. Members from Hampshire—my own county—talk about Hampshire remaining a stand-alone force. Hampshire police force is a large force—much bigger than Leicestershire's—but I do not believe that it can be criticised for being too remote or unresponsive. What is important is the quality of leadership provided by chief constables and chief superintendents within force areas. Yes, there are some important challenges to be managed, but there is no reason to believe that the move toward larger police forces will necessarily diminish local responsiveness, and larger forces will contribute more to efforts to tackle organised crime.

Martin Horwood: The right hon. Gentleman rightly talks about the importance of leadership in police forces. Is he concerned that the abolition of up to 30 chief constable posts might remove an entire tier of leadership from our police forces?

John Denham: I realise that there is nothing worse than someone like me standing up and saying, "When I was a Minister," but it was not that long ago that I was a Police Minister. During that period, I met perhaps 90 per cent. of those who are now assistant chief constables or chief constables and I discussed these issues with almost all of them. I did not encounter a single senior police officer in the ranks of those who aspired to become chief officers in the next five to 10 years who had a word to say in defence of the existing structure of policing in England and Wales. Every single senior officer or aspiring senior officer wanted larger police forces.
	Tonight's debate should have started from that premise. We should then have considered the process and the way to undertake it. On that, I will make some remarks that will be less comforting to Ministers, because I believe that the Government should now take into account certain questions about the process to make sure that we take the public with us in making the necessary changes.
	We need to be careful to avoid too rigid an application of coterminosity with regional boundaries. That has been an issue in Hampshire. There is a case for structuring forces to reflect the movement of crime. I do not wish to tread in areas that English MPs should treat with sensitivity, but I observe that, in terms of crime patterns, north Wales is linked far more with Cheshire and Merseyside than with the rest of Wales. Similarly, if there are to be mergers in my part of the world, there is a case for looking westward to include Dorset.
	The agenda of local government is changing. As the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said, the initial concept—that regionalisation would be followed by elected regional assemblies—was hit a heavy blow by the north-east referendum. The debate on local government is becoming more diverse, with talk about city regions becoming the basic building blocks of local government. I do not think that a fixed approach should be taken to National Assembly or regional boundaries if the patterns of crime and of the criminal justice system point in a different direction. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has indicated—in Hampshire's case at least—some willingness to consider those boundaries and I think that he should continue that approach.

Paul Flynn: Has my right hon. Friend noted that the greatest decrease in the problems of drugs in Europe in the past five years has been achieved in Portugal? The Portuguese changed their laws and reduced the number of drugs deaths by 50 per cent. Does he think that, if we want to tackle that serious problem, we should do what Portugal has done and what his own Home Affairs Committee advocated a few years ago, which is change the laws rather than the organisation?

John Denham: The Committee has certainly not advocated that since I have been a member of it. I have no expertise in the area, but I will hazard a guess that, even if Portugal has made progress on drug crime by one means or another, the criminals concerned are still involved in organised crime. We need a policing pattern that deals with the way in which crime is organised.
	The second issue that Ministers should address as quickly as possible is council tax and local government funding. That issue is not fatal to our position now, but in the new year, the prospects for making progress will be far better if it is possible for each of us to explain to our constituents how reorganisation will affect local funding. If it appears on paper as though our constituents will be picking up the bill for other forces, it will be important to be able to say that, in fact, that will not be case.

Christopher Huhne: It seems from doing a few back-of-the-envelope calculations on the Government's preferred option of a merger between the Hampshire and Thames Valley police forces that we will be looking at a 23 per cent. increase in the police precept across the Hampshire constabulary for no discernible benefit. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that that will be hard to explain to our constituents, given that the force is already the third most effective?

John Denham: We need to move beyond back-of-the-envelope calculations, which are rarely right or helpful. It is important for the Government to produce the necessary figures as quickly as possible.
	We need to see at each stage the national picture and for everyone to understand it. There has at times been a sense of 43 people trying to complete a jigsaw, with only the Home Office hanging on to the lid of the box so as to see the overall picture. The merger between Hampshire and Thames Valley that is under discussion would not   sit easily with, for example, Kent remaining a stand-alone force. It would not be clear what different rules were being applied in each case. I urge the Minister to ensure that, as we move into the new year and consider the pattern of reorganisation, it will be clear what decisions have been made and what guidance has been given in each case, and that it will be possible to demonstrate a consistency of decision from one place to another.
	I did not come into the Chamber to say that everything in the garden is wonderful. There are some issues that arise from the handling of the proposals that we can learn from and tackle in the months to come. I   have been surprised by the extent to which the Opposition have challenged the rationale for attempting the exercise. That challenge is misplaced. I believe that a reorganisation is necessary to protect our citizens from the crimes that they face. That is the basis on which we should start tonight's discussion.

Mark Oaten: It is right and proper that we are discussing changes to the police. We should be emphasising—it is something that has not come across sufficiently—that we probably have one of the best police forces in the world. We are trying to tackle the changes that are taking place in policing, which should not be perceived as a criticism of the work that is done by many policemen and policewomen throughout the country. We have incredible police officers and we should celebrate their work, but that work has changed enormously in the past 10 years.
	Six months ago, during the general election campaign, I was hauled in, as many of us were, to talk to the National Farmers Union. One issue that the NFU raised with me was the fact that we do not see police in rural communities. I was somewhat defensive and argued strongly that they, NFU representatives, had to have a change of expectation of what they could get from the police service. They wanted to go back to the "Dixon of Dock Green" era, but the world of policing has moved on enormously since those days. We now have complex crimes such as terrorism, internet pornography and those involving fraud and corruption. Some of those crimes did not exist 10 years ago.
	We must acknowledge that, while policing patterns have changed enormously and there are new crimes, we still expect our police to do what they were doing 10 years ago. As well as new and complex international crimes, there has been a great increase in some of the crimes that were taking place 10 years ago. There is antisocial behaviour and drug-related crime. There has been a massive increase in the work that the police do in dealing with drugs.
	There is a twin problem: new complex crimes are taking place and established crimes appear to be on the increase. That must be coupled with the massive public expectation of what we want from our police. There is a real need for change, which is why people such as Sir Ian Blair have been right to say that we need a major debate about policing.
	The Government had an enormous opportunity. There was good will among many on both sides of the House in recognising that there should be such a debate. The Government have damaged that good will by rushing forward with a set of proposals and in coming to a conclusion before the debate has even taken place, the conclusion being that the only solution is that mergers should take place.

Annette Brooke: Does my hon. Friend share my great lack of confidence, despite the protests of the Home Secretary this afternoon, that every option advanced by local police forces will be considered? For example, federations and the crossing of regional boundaries could be good solutions that might fit the criteria apart but for the fact that the regional boundaries stand in the way.

Mark Oaten: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In this rushed process we should not be so blinkered as to assume that merger is the best way forward. We should consider some of the options that I wish to set out. It may be that mergers are one alternative. The process should be based on what matters to a local area, with local people being listened to, rather than on a map in the Home Office with the approach of putting things into a grid that suits government rather than individuals and local patterns of crime.
	I have three concerns about what the Government are suggesting. The first is the process. The second is that enormous costs are involved. The third, and probably most important, is the question whether this is the right way forward for policing models.

David Howarth: Is there not a fourth problem, namely that of democratic accountability, especially given the legal limitations on the numbers of representatives allowed on police authorities? Does not the creation of large regional forces mean that many local communities with special policing needs, such as the one that I represent, will be entirely unrepresented in the new police authorities?

Mark Oaten: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One difficulty with the Government's proposal, and with the Opposition's proposal for directly elected police commissioners, is that we have not tackled the issue of real local accountability. I shall have more to say about that.
	Consultation has been badly handled. There is a need for a wide-ranging debate. Given the way in which the Government have proceeded at such a fast rate, they have lost much good will among those who wanted a sensible debate on the issue. They have also angered the associations that work in policing. The Association of Police Authorities is right to feel aggrieved that the process has been boiled down to about three months. It rightly points out that, when the previous restructuring took place in 1959, the bedding-down period was much longer. It was reasonably successful. A rushed merger and a rushed process will create bad will and probably result in a structure that will not work.
	The chairman of the Hampshire police federation has described the process as having been rushed through the Home Office at an "almost obscene pace". I believe that he is right. The chairman of Cheshire police authority said to the Home Secretary:
	"Your timetable is so absurd that it is impossible to have a meaningful dialogue with our communities."
	Those comments were echoed by the shadow Home Secretary and many others who are involved in police matters.
	The next area of concern is the costs involved. Different figures are being put around. My office has spoken to a number of police authorities. First, there is Lincolnshire. The proposed merger for the East Midlands force would amalgamate Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. It is estimated that that would cost £100 million. The director of finance says that, even if the change were made, which could result in some efficiency changes over a long period, there could be a net recurring debt cost of £30 million a year.

David Taylor: I have seen the same figures of a one-off cost of £101 million and a cost of £30 million into the middle distance. A good share of the extra £30 million over forthcoming years relates to underinvestment under previous Governments, as well as the present Government, in relation to the protective service that the police have to offer. Surely the hon. Gentleman should balance his remarks in that regard.

Mark Oaten: To be honest, it will be of little comfort to local taxpayers to start blaming Governments of the present or past. We are where we are. A proposal has been made that, rather than helping to clear the deficit and the cost problem, will add to it.
	There is a proposal to merge Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire into one force. The director of finance said that that would be at a cost of £66 million. Similarly, when we talked to the forces for Kent, Surrey and Sussex, we were told that the merger would cost £91 million. Those are large sums for police forces and the money will have to be found from somewhere. Given the global figure, we can assume a total sum of £500 million to £600 million. The money will have to be found from council tax payers or from front-line police. If the figure is £500 million, it equates to about 5,000 police officers. I know where my priorities lie—I would wish to have 5,000 police officers, rather than spend that money on restructuring.
	May I deal with the criticism that the Government are approaching the problem from the wrong direction and   have produced the wrong solution? I believe passionately that policing should be local. Many contributors have said that people want a local model for policing and, in fairness to the Government, they and the Home Secretary have stressed that point themselves, but I fear that a shift towards super-forces will send all the wrong signals if we wish to establish local accountability. Chief constables should be able to name every village and every part of the community. They should not be in a position where they do not have any idea at all where they are. However much we strengthen basic command units and however much we   invest in local policing, unless the people at the heart of the organisation—the individuals who drive and deliver the service and are in charge of it from day to day—know and understand the needs of their communities, we will not achieve proper local policing in this country.

John Denham: Would the hon. Gentleman apply that logic to the Metropolitan police service, which is far larger than any of the police forces that are going to be introduced?

Mark Oaten: Sir Ian Blair, the commissioner, does not have any problem travelling around that geographical area. Some of the forces that are to be created would need to hire police helicopters just to transport the chief constable from one area to another. The two concepts are very different and we have always accepted that policing in London requires a separate model. The link with the local community is essential, because it gives the chief constable a connection with the community and ultimate accountability for the area.

Stephen O'Brien: Does the hon. Gentleman therefore agree that any trend that favours regionalisation and organisation by regions will lead to an increasing breach in the trust between people who perform a service for the public and the public themselves? If the police are to be merged into larger units, there will be a failure of trust, as, indeed, will be the case if proposals for the ambulance and fire services, and for shire county local authorities, are carried out.

Mark Oaten: There are many examples in which the forces that would be created are so large that a breakdown of trust would ensue. Worse still, there would be unhealthy competition between areas defined by the old boundaries, which would start to lobby against one another inside the new organisation. There would be accusations that one area was losing out and that large cities were gaining more than rural areas in large forces. Great tensions will build up when there is no need to create them in the first place.
	It is important to acknowledge the role of the public, who are rightly concerned about the terrorist threat to this country, child pornography and so on. They want the Government to set up a structure that does everything possible to tackle those issues. The reality is that, however awful the events in London in the summer, people are concerned about crime that affects their daily lives, such as having their car window smashed, having their house burgled or having something sprayed on the side of their house, all of which they regard as an important policing priority. My nervousness about larger strategic forces, which will rightly be given the priority of dealing with the terrorist threat and larger crimes, stems from the fact that they will forget individuals' local concerns, which will be pushed further down what will be a very large inbox for the chief constable. The chief constables of the new forces will be required to report to the Home Office to say that they have dealt with the larger issues, but the local policing issues will be left behind.
	Finally, on the question of structure, I have a growing concern, not only in relation to the police but in relation to the fire services and the Government's proposals on the probation service, that we will remove important local links, because it is thought that they do not matter. It is not as if it is efficient to move fire control centres to a larger area or local boards in the probation service are not needed. Such change is regrettable, and the move to larger areas takes away the local agenda.
	What is the alternative and how do we deal with the problem? I acknowledge the difficulty in relation to some of the smaller forces and I accepted at the outset the need to recognise changing policing patterns and the way in which we deal with them. The Government have gone some way towards dealing with the issue. Only 18 months ago, they established SOCA—the Serious Organised Crime Agency—because they rightly accepted that solving some serious crimes required expertise and a national approach. We should expand SOCA so that forces that experience difficulties and cannot cope with, for example, a serious threat of a terrorist attack or a complex crime, can call in resources from SOCA, which has the expertise to deal with such problems. That is a much better model than merging forces and requiring them to achieve SOCA's skill level. The solution is staring the Government in the face. They created SOCA, which we should expand and use further. We need to make a number of other changes.

Mark Francois: The chief constable of Essex, when endorsing the Essex stand-alone option in Chelmsford on Friday, said:
	"I believe that some of the Protective Services would be best provided by a national agency and not through the strategic force solution—counter terrorism for example."
	Is that not an important statement from the chief constable of one of the largest forces in the country?

Mark Oaten: The hon. Gentleman has made an excellent point. Having established SOCA, we should use and expand its expertise, so that forces can call on it at any given time. That is a perfectly sensible solution, as I am not convinced that mergers will solve the difficulty.

David Heath: Under the Government proposals, the south-west would stretch from the Isles of Scilly to north Gloucestershire. For an individual in my constituency, there is precious little difference between such an authority, which covers an area the size of Belgium, and a national police force. I am therefore not sure that the regional forces represent any sort of localism at any level.

Mark Oaten: In some of the examples that have been given there is little connection between the communities involved. In such circumstances, one might as well have a national police force. The model that we are suggesting, however, keeps everything that is special and important about the local structure, but does not dodge the difficult question that the Government rightly ask about the way in which we deal with more complex crimes.
	There are two more things that we need to do. We must recognise that our borders are difficult and complex. Leaving border control to a combination of the local force and Customs and Excise is probably not the most effective way to secure our borders and I argue strongly that we should consider setting up a national border force. At the same time, we should do everything that we can to strengthen local accountability.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: I am interested in that point. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that some aspects of policing, including, according to him, the policing of our borders, should be handled by a national force?

Mark Oaten: The hon. Lady is correct and I shall clarify the model that we are suggesting. First, we should have a national border force for our borders, which, we accept, are complex and difficult to police. It is critical to do so at a time when guns, knives and the drugs problem are threatening the country. Such a force would manage sea borders and our ports. Secondly, we would expand SOCA to deal with the complex crimes that I set out. Finally, we should keep our forces as they are, with strengthened basic command units, so that they can deal with day-to-day local policing. That is a sensible policing model for this country.

Mark Tami: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that we have an American-style FBI?

Mark Oaten: The hon. Gentleman misses the point. His accusation could have been levelled at the Government when they set up SOCA, but they have changed their position. We supported SOCA because it was a sensible acknowledgement of the complex nature of crime. I do not understand why the Government cannot develop that proposal and expand the agency to take care of our policing problems.

John Denham: Will the hon. Gentleman expand his argument? SOCA does not have huge numbers of people working for it. It is dependent on the existing capacity at force level. Is he suggesting that there would be a massive transfer of perhaps tens of thousands of officers from police forces to SOCA? If not, his solution does not solve the problem of needing people in each police force who are capable of delivering the response to organised crime.

Mark Oaten: I have a great deal of respect for the right hon. Gentleman, who is the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. What I have been saying is that SOCA needs an expanded and enhanced role, but the point that he makes is interesting because a great deal of movement is already taking place, as the individuals seconded to SOCA from Hampshire or other forces move backwards and forwards. There clearly is spare cash, so rather than spending the money on reorganisation and restructuring, expanding SOCA would be the sensible model with which to make progress.

Kevan Jones: I am interested in the notion of a border police force. Durham has a very long and now beautiful coastline, thanks to having had its beaches cleaned up by a Labour local government. Can the hon.   Gentleman exemplify how such a force would work in practice? For example, when working with Durham police, would it control the beaches of Durham or Northumberland? How much would it cost?

Mark Oaten: The hon. Gentleman is being mischievous. We know where the critical points are in this country, where we need a border force: ports, airports and other points of entry. Those are the key points where we need to expand and have better co-ordination.

Kevan Jones: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mark Oaten: No, I will not give way.
	Having established such a structure, the Government should focus on other things, rather than a wasted merger exercise. For example, is it not time that we saw better co-ordination between the various police forces in this country? That can be achieved without a merger. There is no evidence to suggest that creating 11 large forces will improve co-ordination. Sadly, in the Soham case, there was a failure of communication between the Cambridge and Humberside forces. That failure of communication could still happen even with larger forces.
	Step one would be to ensure that the existing forces have proper IT and management, so that they can talk to one another. Step two would be a big investment in the technology that the police must work with. Step three would be to start to cut some of the targets that the Government have set. Step four would be to cut some of the time police waste on paperwork. Labour Members may tut, but that is what police officers talk about. None of them talks about merging police forces: they talk about changing their day-to-day working routine so that they can be out on the streets for longer.

Ian Lucas: I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman's important speech. Can he explain why none of the Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament for Wales has seen fit to attend the debate today?

Mark Oaten: I guarantee that, if the Government are prepared to hold a debate on a serious day when we can vote on the issue, all 62 of our MPs will be here, but the Government have chosen not to allow such a vote, which is a disgrace. Without a shadow of a doubt, we are up for being here in large numbers if the Government allow a vote on the issue.
	Other hon. Members want to speak, so I conclude by saying that the Government have wasted an opportunity. We need to invest in our police, to ensure that they are local and accountable and to use the existing structures that the Government have set up to deal with serious and organised crime in this country. What we do not need is a merger exercise that will cost the equivalent of 5,000 police on the beat or a rushed debate on the issue. I hope that the Home Secretary will listen to the shadow Home Secretary and consider giving us six months. Perhaps the Minister will be prepared to acknowledge that an early debate will take place in January, when the Home Secretary has had time to consider some of the proposals that have been made. Perhaps the Minister will even be prepared to let the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee and his colleagues do some serious work on the issue, because I   believe that, when the proposals are examined in detail, it will be shown that they will do nothing to improve policing in this country.

Albert Owen: I am pleased to address an important issue for Members of Parliament from Wales. It should be important to hon. Members from all parties, particularly the Liberal Democrats, who now call themselves the official Opposition in Wales, although not one of their four MPs from Wales could turn up.

Martin Horwood: Does the hon. Gentleman think it disgraceful that none of the Labour Members from Gloucestershire is present for the debate? Is there not much division that can be talked about?

Albert Owen: I was about to argue that the Liberal Democrats are part of the official Opposition, and I am sure that many English MPs from all parties are present, but the point has been made.

Mark Tami: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Albert Owen: I want to make a little progress if I can, because I want to add the very important Welsh dimension to the debate.
	The Home Secretary said in his opening remarks that he was not moving towards a national police force, but in Welsh terms that is exactly what he is doing. I was pleased that my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee made a very important point about the crime trend in Wales, which is east-west. Indeed, the geography and the transport systems in many ways lead east to west, which is the way in which crime takes place. I shall return to that point a little later.
	An all-Wales force will be a Cardiff-centric force. In many ways, resources will be taken to Cardiff from the areas on the periphery that I represent and, indeed, from the whole north Wales region. We have experienced that with devolution. I am very much a pro-devolutionist, but most of the powers have been transferred from London to Cardiff. When we have strategic forces, the   resources will cover the Cardiff area. In fairness to the Welsh Assembly Government, they are talking about moving regional offices, but there is no talk about the fire and other emergency services following that pattern.
	I feel strongly about a couple of other issues, including the cost implications for Wales. North Wales police force has invested using its council tax precept and increased its numbers over and above the Home Office allocation. We north Wales MPs have supported that in many ways, and we have seen the results. The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, who is sitting on the Front Bench, is aware of the work that North Wales police have done, which was reflected in the HMIC baseline report that came out in October this year. There have been excellent results, with excellent resources. What worries the police authority in north Wales and, indeed, many councillors, MPs and Assembly Members is that all that may be lost. If we have an equalisation in council tax, those in the south will cry out that their precept will increase. On the other side of the coin, many of the resources that have been invested by north Wales council tax payers will go down south. That is a big issue for people in north Wales.
	Another issue is jobs. The Home Secretary said that there will be economic savings, but I guarantee hon.   Members that, in the Welsh dimension, jobs will be lost from the north to the south. There is no need for that to happen. I have heard no one at HMIC come up with a solution that would allow strategic forces to be effective in places such as north Wales and others on the periphery that do not have the necessary critical mass. I   am a bit concerned about those issues.
	We have an added problem in Wales in that the Welsh Assembly Government contribute an awful lot of their money to community policing issues in work that is coterminous with that of local authorities. The Minister is aware that I have been concerned about that in the past. I should like her to make it clear to the House today that the Home Office does not envisage the proposals as the thin end of the wedge in devolving police issues to Wales. It is very important to retain   cross-border links with English authorities—particularly, in respect of the North Wales force, with Cheshire, but not just that authority. My colleagues from the south have the same concerns about the links with Bristol and Somerset. Those are big issues for us.
	Historically, crime has moved east-west. North Wales police have taken down motor vehicle registrations because of the historic east-west links, and that project works. What would happen to such hugely successful projects, which North Wales police have piloted, if we were to move to an all-Wales force?
	On another issue that relates to cost, the North Wales police authority has estimated—these are the only figures that we have, because the Home Office has given us none—that to meet the level 2 policing requirement in the HMIC report would cost about £3 million for the   North Wales force. The Association of Police Authorities in Wales estimates that the Welsh dimension of restructuring would cost between £47 million and £57 million. I believe that that money would be better spent on assisting the smaller forces to meet the level 2 requirement that the HMIC report asks them to meet. Of course, some small forces, such as the North Wales force, which covers the port of Holyhead in my constituency, are dealing with terrorism issues, and Welsh ports have done so for many years, given the IRA threat in Ireland.

David Jones: The hon. Gentleman has raised a number of powerful and important points against an all-Wales police force. Against that background, does he not agree that it is absolutely disgraceful that the Home Office has ruled out any option for Wales other than an all-Wales force and is attempting to bounce the people of Wales into a marriage of inconvenience that nobody seems to want?

Albert Owen: I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was present when the Home Secretary made his opening remarks and I intervened on him. My right hon. Friend said that he was willing to look at all the   options, including the one that I put forward. The reason that Conservative Members have been asking for a debate is to make such points to the Home Secretary in the House, and we have begun to do that. I would like a longer period of debate, and that is why I am making the points that I am today and have made before.
	The hon. Gentleman will know that the chief constable of North Wales is firmly sitting on the fence and is giving no leadership on the issue. He says one thing to one area and another elsewhere. Indeed, the four chief constables in Wales are sending mixed messages, and I would like to see leadership from them. Three out of the four said at the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs that they favoured an all-Wales force in principle. My chief constable might be sitting on the fence, but I am not. I think that an all-Wales force would be bad for the people I represent in north Wales.

Paul Flynn: My hon. Friend will recall that the four chief constables said a year ago that they were all opposed to an all-Wales force. What credibility can we put on what they say?

Albert Owen: That is the point that I made when I said that our chief constables are not showing the leadership that we want. A cynic would say that one of the four is after the top job if we move towards an all-Wales force, but that is not for me to say. It is for me to say that we need leadership. We also need the time so that those leaders can make a proper case for the other options.
	North Wales is one of the top-performing police forces in the United Kingdom. It came in the top 10 in the United Kingdom and has been the top-performing force in Wales year on year. It has improved with the extra resources. We should not rule out the cross-border collaboration that we have with Cheshire, and we should not put the political dimension before the operational needs of policing. I reiterate that point.

Mark Tami: Will my hon. Friend join me in recognising that, to get the extra money in the precept, it was important to convince people that that meant extra police on the streets? That is now being delivered. If we move to an all-Wales force, there is a danger that it will be seen as meaning that resources will be sucked into south Wales.

Albert Owen: That is the point I made earlier. We have invested additional resources in local policing and we are concerned that we will lose them in an all-Wales dimension if decision making takes place further south.

David Taylor: May I offer my hon. Friend a word of caution? Any cross-border collaboration with Cheshire might have its problems, because Cheshire built a new force headquarters on a greenfield site as little as four years ago. If that force were to merge with others such as Merseyside or North Wales, who would pay for the remaining 20 years of the private finance initiative deal into which a commitment has been made for that site?

Albert Owen: My hon. Friend knows that I could not possibly answer that question, but it is one of the serious issues that is thrown up when new expenditure takes place. There are additional police stations in the North Wales force and if it were to merge with another, many of those stations might become redundant. We must also consider that issue.

Stephen O'Brien: The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety has just opened the new police headquarters in Winsford in my constituency. It cost only £30 million and if the Cheshire force were to merge, it looks like there would be a questionable return on the PFI.

Albert Owen: I shall repeat my belief that collaboration between North Wales and Cheshire is important, and I hope that the Minister will address that point when she winds up and deal with the issue of the political boundaries and the Welsh dimension of the   Assembly Government, and that she will allow co-operation to take place.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) referred to police headquarters, but the issue is also about the rebranding of Welsh police forces. It would cost an awful lot of money if we were to rebrand them. There has been a lot of expenditure on North Wales and on each force with its own identity, and that expenditure would also be lost when it could have been used elsewhere.
	I know that many Members wish to speak, but the Welsh dimension is extremely important. I ask the Minister to bear it in mind when she winds up.

Michael Howard: The chief constable of Gloucestershire, who was accurately quoted by my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, has said that the proposals that are the subject of today's debate represent the most profound change in policing since the modern police service was created in 1829. They should therefore have been based on compelling evidence, subjected to a full and thorough consultation exercise and been supported by a substantial body of public opinion. The extent to which these criteria have not been met has admirably been explained in detail by my right hon. Friend in his speech, with which I entirely agreed.
	I also largely agreed with the speech of the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), and not surprisingly, as it consisted in large part of a full endorsement of the policies on which the Conservative party fought the last general election. It is a pity that he did not say so at the time, but we cannot have everything in life. I welcome his conversion to our policies.
	I want, however, to concentrate my remarks on the implications of the Government's proposals for the   policing of Kent. It is always useful to start at the beginning. The purpose of the report that Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary was commissioned by the Home Office to prepare was to provide a professional assessment of whether the present 43-force structure is the right one to meet the challenges posed by the current and future policing environment. I would like to begin by assessing the extent to which Kent police meet those challenges.
	On any view, Kent is a high-performing force. In the baseline assessment, published as recently as 27 October, Kent was placed at joint third. Kent, Lancashire and Staffordshire are the only forces to have had a top five position for two successive years. In the overall 2004–05 police performance assessment framework, Kent achieved the fourth highest national score, and is listed as improved in five of the seven assessment categories measured.
	Kent has a proven track record in dealing with high-risk, protective services issues such as the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, the Deal barracks bombing and the channel tunnel fire. As the channel tunnel terminal is in my constituency, that is, of course, a matter of special and particular concern to me. Kent also has widely acknowledged and respected investigative expertise for major and serious crime. The force currently has a 100 per cent. detection rate for murder and manslaughter. Moreover, Kent is a force that is keen to change. Prior to the publication of the inspectorate's report, Kent had already embarked on a number of comprehensive force-wide reviews to secure "fitness for purpose" for the next 10 years.
	In their plans to achieve that objective, Kent police are very conscious of their links with the agencies responsible for securing our borders and with their law enforcement counterparts across the channel. Those links, and Kent's links with the Metropolitan police, are much closer than the links with Sussex and Surrey, although I stop short of suggesting that a merger with the gendarmerie of the Pas de Calais would be an appropriate solution.
	In the light of those facts, it is not surprising that the response of the chief constable and the Kent police authority to the Government's proposal is that Kent can do best as a stand-alone strategic authority. That view is supported by nearly nine out of 10 Kent residents. What arguments could there possibly be for the view that Kent should merge with Sussex and Surrey? It certainly cannot be cost. The cost of the merger is estimated at £58 million. As we know, unless Kent caves in by Friday, which I very much hope it will not, the cost would not be met by the Home Office; it would be met by the council tax payers of Kent.
	The only argument as far as I can see against the stand-alone option is that although Kent satisfies the   6,000 total staff threshold set by the Home Secretary, it does not quite meet his requirement that forces should have at least 4,000 police officers. Kent does not quite satisfy that test, because it has taken a proactive approach to work force modernisation and, in particular, to the recruitment of support staff into a wide range of roles previously filled by police officers, which is something that every Home Secretary, including me, has encouraged police forces to do for the past decade or more. In addition, Kent has 323 special constables, who are not included in the figures.
	The question also touches on the extent to which the Home Office is dealing with those matters in good faith. On 15 November, the chief constable of Kent and the chairman of Kent police authority discussed the issue with John Giffard, the director of the police structures review unit, when Mr. Giffard assured them that the requirement for 4,000 police officers is not a must. On 29 November, the chairman of Kent police authority wrote to the Home Secretary asking for confirmation that that is indeed the case, but, sadly, no reply to that letter has been received yet. I hope that the Minister will specifically deal with that question and give me and the House the assurance sought in that letter.
	In his speech at the beginning of the debate, my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary made some powerful criticisms of the Government's approach, and I support those criticisms. Even if the Government are determined to proceed with their proposals in general—I hope that they are not—there is no case for forcing on Kent police a merger that does not accord with logic, the effective use of resources or the wishes of the people of Kent. I hope that wiser counsels will prevail.

Martyn Jones: My right hon. Friend the Minister will recall that I took part in the police parliamentary scheme with North Wales police. In the previous Parliament, the Welsh Affairs Committee took evidence from all four forces in Wales about how they deal with antisocial behaviour. I   therefore have some knowledge of the issues and many concerns about the proposals, but in the light of the number of hon. Members who want to speak, I shall make only one or two points.
	I am afraid that the change will not work for Wales, and especially not for north Wales, because the parameters that the Home Office has laid down—a force size of between 4,000 and 6,000, no existing force being split and no crossing of boundaries—do not work for Wales. I do not disagree with those parameters per se, but from what I have learned about crime patterns in north Wales, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) mentioned, an amalgamation with Cheshire police would make more sense than an all-Wales police force. However, the only realistic regional boundary in Wales is the Welsh border. An all-Wales police force would have nearly 8,000 police officers, more than 5,000 of whom would be in south Wales, which is more than 200 miles away from the cross-border level 2 crime in north Wales. I do not believe that an all-Wales police force would deliver on level 2 crime for the north.
	North Wales police force is not huge—it has 1,600 police officers—but it has a very good record. Most local authority wards already have a dedicated policeman—the community beat manager. Community policing is not so advanced in other parts of Wales, and in south Wales it is mainly performed by community support officers. In north Wales, council tax is high because of the high police precept, but the people accept it because they get good policing and because they are happy with that policing. Yes, council tax will decrease under the proposals, but my right hon. Friend the Minister will recall that when I met her recently she said that any reductions will be phased in. Any changes in council tax will benefit south Wales, which will not go down well in north Wales. I also wonder what effect such changes will have on the North Wales police budget.
	There will be provisions for local accountability in the more rural parts of Wales, but the other side of that coin is that there will be no economies of scale, which is a worry. However, an all-Wales police force is the only answer to the criteria, which is why police forces in Wales appear to support it. They have been given the parameters and the task of fulfilling the criteria, and the   only answer is an all-Wales police force.
	Will the Minister consider allowing a change in the criteria to fit the geography of Wales? Better still, will she consider the other option, the status quo, but with extra resources for north Wales and south Wales to deal with the level 2 problem? We should also consider how the basic command units and community policing will work out in practice. We should try to make real improvements on level 2 crimes by other means before making what I believe will be a bad mistake for policing as a whole in Wales.

Roger Gale: Once again, I   place on the record the fact that this is not the debate that the House wanted. On 29 November, there was a debate in Westminster Hall, and it is because of pressure arising from that, and only from that, that we are having this debate on the day before the House rises for Christmas, and with no vote. Given the importance of the issue to all our constituents, the House and the public can only regard that as a disgrace.
	When the Minister replies to the debate, I hope that she will say that in the light of representations that may or may not be made by 23 December, there will be a further debate with a vote in the new year, in which case she will find that both the Government Benches and the Opposition Benches will be packed. The 23 December deadline is far too early; the statistics are inadequate; and the finance has not been backed up with any figures. For any chief constable to be asked to seek to respond within that time scale to something as serious and as far-reaching for the future of policing in this country as this is, again, a disgrace.
	I shall concentrate on two issues. First, I shall follow the comments made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr.   Howard) on policing in Kent; and, secondly, I shall briefly touch on the future of the British Transport police, in which I have a particular interest.
	As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe has said, Kent is an exemplary force that meets all the strategic qualifications—for example, it has 6,124 staff. Kent police has made a major input into the Kent public service board, which pulls together public services in the county and co-ordinates a £7.2 billion budget. The proposed reorganisation would place much of that co-operation at risk and is highly undesirable.
	My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe has highlighted Kent police's track record in dealing with the Herald of Free Enterprise, the Deal barracks bombing, the channel tunnel fire and high profile murder inquiries. He omitted asylum and immigration, which are still real concerns to our constituents in Kent. That track record is exemplary.
	At the moment, Kent police effectively has no borrowing. We are discussing the imposition of an almost instant debt of between £18 million and £20 million, which the chief constable, Mike Fuller, has told me would take between possibly five years and probably 10 years to repay, before any savings are made. That cannot be sound economics and, as has been said, we all know that such savings never actually accrue, because costs always rise.
	The Home Office has not indicated who will meet that cost, which, as has been pointed out over and over again, can fall only as a burden on council tax payers—in this case, in the county of Kent.
	The Home Office appears to have paid scant or no attention to the legislative implications of its proposals for Kent. My understanding is that the Channel Tunnel Act 1987 would need to be amended, the Sangatte protocol of 1991 would have to be redrawn, and the Channel Tunnel (International Arrangements) Order 1993 would require primary legislation, as would the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Act 1996. It will be interesting to hear the Minister explain when and how all that primary legislation will be introduced.
	Kent is ready and prepared to be a strategic authority within its own boundaries, but I would not wish to throw to the wolves any of the other forces—Sussex, Hampshire, Surrey or the Thames Valley—with which Kent's name has been linked. We are looking for a strategic role for Kent, but a federal solution for the others. That is the real issue that neither the Home Secretary nor any of his Ministers has yet properly addressed, and it cannot and will not be addressed by 23 December.
	I turn to the British Transport police and its future role within the policing of the United Kingdom. I am aware that the BTP is not a Home Office force but, in tandem with the review of the Home Office constabulary throughout the United Kingdom, it is the subject of a Department for Transport review. As the Minister is well aware, one of the proposals on the table is that it should be merged, in whole or in part, with the Metropolitan police and become a Home Office force.
	The British Transport police, with which I have the honour to serve as a special constable, was established in the 1830s. It does not meet the Home Office requirements for staffing, with 3,662 staff in total. It polices, or is responsible for the policing of, 21,000 miles of railway track and 2,500 stations, as well as goods yards and all other railway property. Last year, it looked after the travelling needs of passengers on an estimated 1 billion journeys.
	The BTP has been subjected to five reviews since 2001. It meets nine out of nine performance targets, and in 2004 and 2005 was regarded as, and remains, a target leader throughout the European Union. Its chief constable, Ian Johnston, has said that it has its own environment, with a way in, a way out, and a defined territory. It also has a defined force of men and women with specialist training in railway law, track safety, and all the hazards of 21,000 miles of track and associated stations and other territory. The BTP is experienced in dealing with terrorism—it has had to be since the terrorist outbreaks caused by the IRA in the 1970s and beyond. In 15 years, BTP policemen have dealt with eight major crashes covering five police areas. They also attend many major events and are responsible for the policing of football crowds. If Members will pardon the   pun, the track record is there.
	The proposal to merge all or part of the BTP with the Met could only weaken a very specialist and specialised force. It is inevitable that a commissioner of the Met, short of staff, would immediately poach from the London underground, which is part of BTP territory, and from the BTP's above-ground force. That would be to the detriment of the policing of London, of London's subways and of the whole United Kingdom. If we rip the heart out of the British Transport police force by giving the underground system to the Met, we do so at our peril. It was tried with the New York police department, but all that happened was that subway crime rose.
	I say this to the Minister: whatever else you choose to do, please keep your hands off this very specialised force; recognise the job that it does not only in the London area but nationwide; and understand that once it is gone it will never, ever be replaced.

Patrick McFadden: Police force reorganisation will affect every community in the country. At its heart is this fundamental question: what is the correct police force structure to serve the community on the range of crime related issues from antisocial behaviour in local neighbourhoods to major organised crime such as drugs, people trafficking and, ultimately, international terrorism? In today's world we cannot leave the community or police forces facing a choice between effective policing at a local level and an effective fight against organised and international crime. The public rightly expect both. The task for Ministers and for the police is to deliver a force structure that meets these very different challenges as effectively as possible.
	Of course, the easiest option would be to do nothing—to duck the issue, avoid the controversy, and say it was all too difficult. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) said, we have heard that sentiment from Opposition Front Benchers today. They gave us a shopping list of reasons not to change and not to face up to the issues facing the police and the country, but a party of government has to choose and to take difficult decisions if it wants to meet the challenges of the future.
	The most common charge against the proposals is that they will make policing more remote and less responsive to local communities. That is a serious charge that we should examine. As Members of Parliament, we are acutely aware of the importance of issues of crime and antisocial behaviour to local communities. We regularly see constituents who feel powerless in the face of those in our community who pay no regard to the welfare of others—who vandalise property, spray graffiti on houses, disturb the peace of the area and engage in other forms of antisocial behaviour that are a blight on our communities. For the decent people in our constituencies, a small measure such as the gating off of an alleyway or the imposition of an antisocial behaviour order preventing those responsible from entering an area can make the difference between a tolerable life and one that is a constant struggle for peace and order.
	It is precisely because of the crucial importance of the fight against antisocial behaviour and local crime that the very first question we should ask of the Government's proposals is what their effect will be on neighbourhood policing. The key police unit for community policing is the basic command unit—the BCU—or, as it is known in the west midlands force, the   operational command unit. That unit organises local policing and ensures the presence on the streets of the police whom local people want to see. I therefore welcome the strong assurances we have had from the Home Secretary and, in the past, from the Minister, that the BCU structure will not be diminished by proposals for force reorganisation.

Peter Luff: Has the hon. Gentleman seen the briefing by the Association of Police Authorities stating that
	"the time, effort and costs of restructuring will divert attention and improvements away from neighbourhood policing"
	and that
	"if police forces become more 'strategic', Basic Command Units will generally have to get bigger"?
	I am afraid that what the hon. Gentleman suggests will not happen.

Patrick McFadden: That is certainly not the view of the chief constable of the west midlands police force, to whom I spoke earlier today.
	The point about BCUs is absolutely essential, because it means that the unit of policing responsible for community policing stays as it is, regardless of the force structure above its head.

Martin Horwood: Is not the hon. Gentleman alarmed that it says in section 4.12 of the O'Connor report that the number of BCUs has fallen from 320 to just 230 in three years, so the process is already in train whereby they are getting bigger?

Patrick McFadden: Again, the chief constable of my local force believes that the BCU structure will be strengthened, not diminished, in the coming period. Indeed, the greatly increased number of police community support officers planned over the next few years will be deployed at BCU level, thereby ensuring an enhanced uniformed presence on the streets, which is what our constituents want. In the west midlands area, it is expected that this expansion in community support officers will mean some 1,200 more uniformed officers in local communities.
	I have referred to my discussions this morning with the chief constable of West Midlands police. He has long experience of both rural and urban policing, and his view is that an expansion along the lines proposed by the Government would
	"be good for the people of the West Midlands and would enhance local community policing."

Stephen O'Brien: Would the hon. Gentleman find it more helpful in placing absolute confidence in the impartiality of all chief constables if they were either not   allowed to take part in the consultation or had a self-denying ordinance that none of them would apply for the top jobs if there was any reorganisation? We could then place some trust in their impartiality on those somewhat partial opinions.

Patrick McFadden: I believe that the motives of the chief constable to whom I spoke are somewhat higher than the hon. Gentleman implies.
	The issue is what the effect of the proposals would be on more serious crime and on contingency planning for emergency situations—the level 2 crime that we have heard about. It is that kind of issue that the HMIC report that triggered the process sought to highlight. This is the very gap in current capabilities that force restructuring seeks to address. Here again, the West Midlands force believes strongly that the economies of scale involved in mergers will strengthen provision in those areas.
	As we have heard, serious crime holds no respect for county boundaries. People traffickers and the drugs trade operate across wide areas. By pooling resources and concentrating key officers when and where they may be needed, amalgamation could strengthen significantly the police's hand against this sort of crime. For example, it has been questioned whether it is really sensible, when there may be a concentration of very serious crime in a small force, to have sometimes to withdraw officers from the community to fight such serious crime when reorganisation could enable the force more readily to call on specialist officers and units to deal with such crime. If the proposals can combine more effective policing at a local level and better protective services on more serious crime, they will offer a better service to the public and should command the support of the House.
	There is then the critical issue of cost. Inevitably, there will be start-up costs, as there would be with any restructuring. But the way to judge the proposals is to take into account both start-up costs and savings in future years released by not having 43 separate force headquarters and 43 separate chief constables' offices, and by ensuring that savings released by economies of scale go back into front-line policing. I cannot speak with certainty about the future costs over the coming years, but the West Midlands police authority estimates savings of some £158 million over 10 years. The other cost issue is any impact on the police precept. The public   will, I believe, understand the arguments for reorganisation of police forces, but I ask the Minister to bear in mind any impact on police precepts for local people as she and her colleagues take the proposals forward.
	I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that our police service is among the   best in the world. It enjoys a high level of trust from   the   public and it has more resources and manpower now than ever before. It has helped to bring about a fall in crime of some one third since 1997 and now it must face up to new challenges at every level. If it is communicated loud and clear that these proposals help, not hinder local policing, if they do not result in major precept increases for the public, and if they can deliver the kind of improvement in protective services that we all want to see, they can and will command the confidence of the public and will lead to a major enhancement of our ability to fight crime, both in local neighbourhoods and against the most serious crimes facing our society today.

James Paice: I am grateful to be called relatively early in the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Inevitably, like many other hon. Members, I want to refer to my own force, Cambridgeshire, but before doing so I want to use the knowledge and experience that I gained in the role of shadow police spokesman, which I held for some three years, during which time I met many chief officers, police authority representatives and ordinary police officers throughout the country, as well as—I referred to this earlier—having experienced the awful tragedy in Soham in my constituency, a high profile murder case, with all its implications for inter-force co-operation.
	I was staggered to hear not only the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden) but the Select Committee Chairman, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), castigate my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary for apparently resisting change. Frankly, that is nonsense, because he is rightly proposing directly elected police commissioners. To say that he is resisting change while at the same time he is proposing directly elected police commissioners, I   find somewhat odd. But the Home Secretary is right; there are problems to be resolved. The present form of policing in this country leaves a lot to be desired. Policing is far from perfect.
	The "Closing the Gap" report, about which we have heard a lot today, identified where in the protective services there are grave shortcomings across a vast proportion of the police forces. I in no way dissent from the fact that there is a problem. What I dissent from is the Government's proposed solution to that problem. But there are also other problems that the report did not address. There are problems concerning the police themselves. I fear that there are now too many of what I call technocrats in the police force—people who are not necessarily good managers, but who have read the book and absorbed the gospel about how to solve crime without actually having gone out and done it. They are not very good at managing people and policing is largely about personal skills, both liaising with the public and with all the many other people with whom they have to deal. There is a perception in parts of the country, certainly in my constituency, of an unwillingness among the police sometimes to get out of their office or car. Those perceptions will not be resolved or improved by even more remote services, which the proposals suggest.
	I also accept, as the Home Secretary suggested, that there is a need to do more to combat high level and organised crime. But as the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) said, that was the purpose of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which Conservatives and Liberal Democrats supported. It is the building block for a much more comprehensive attack on such crime. There is no reason why there could not be local branches or squads of SOCA in every force area, precisely to address local issues and form local links. But the vast majority of my constituents—and I   believe the same is true of everybody else's constituents—are bothered not by high level and organised crime, but by local crime such as street crime, car crime, vandalism, burglary and so on. Therefore, the proposed changes have to be examined against their effect on that sort of crime—the 95-odd per cent. of crime that affects ordinary people. I do not believe that the changes will help. Policing will become more distant and there will be a less accountable police force.
	The importance of neighbourhood policing cannot be over-emphasised. It is not just about reassurance. In my time I have been very critical of the word "reassurance". Reassurance is a result of effective policing; it should not be the objective. Neighbourhood policing is about local intelligence. The Home Secretary referred to the greater importance of intelligence-led policing. Yes, but so much of that intelligence arises from police officers on the ground, on the streets, in our villages, knowing who is a stranger in the area, picking up what is going on and   being part of the community. That is real neighbourhood policing, and it is about low level local intelligence. But so often that can lead to much higher level intelligence in the field of serious and organised crime.
	As I said earlier, as with the Soham tragedy, mutual aid is also important for small forces that cannot perhaps, as currently structured, do everything as effectively as a larger one. The Soham case demonstrated that mutual aid does work—but there is plenty of room for improvement. That would be a better way, with an enhanced role for the Association of Chief Police Officers in issuing codes of practice about how it can work, to create a much clearer understanding. That is the basis for greater cross-border co-operation.
	On the issue of effective use of resources, not many people would say that spending £500 million on these proposals is the best use of resources. I suspect that if the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, who has left the Chamber, had been asked by the Home Secretary how he, as a former Minister with responsibility for police, would spend £500 million to enhance our policing, restructuring would not have been his first suggestion. I suspect that not many other Members would have suggested that.
	I suspect that the economy of scale envisaged by the proposal will not arise. Of course smaller forces are not able to have specialist units—reference was made to firearms and quick-response units earlier—but there is no reason why adjoining forces should not share a unit and the costs of it. All this restructuring is not necessary to address a relatively minor, albeit important, understanding. Again, ACPO could have a role in producing draft memos of understanding about how such joint squads could be operated. I see all that as being done within the police family, without the Home Secretary coming from on high and getting heavy.
	Similarly, in the case of central services such as human resources and all the other administrative-type services, there is no reason why one cannot have joint provision, with one force contracting its services out to others. That sort of thing could happen if we had a more proactive ACPO, and fewer prima donnas in the police force who want to do it all in-house, which is part of the problem. Again, that could be done without the Home Secretary stepping in.
	As for Cambridgeshire, I cannot say like many hon. Members that mine is one of the best police forces and that I want to keep it as it is, because I readily admit that it comes close to the bottom of the league table in many aspects. Those figures are out-of-date, however, and we believe that the force's performance over the past year or so is improving, partly as a result of the appointment of our former deputy chief constable, Julie Spence, who, I am delighted to say, was appointed last week as chief constable. She has brought a breath of fresh air to the force.
	My constituents want to see their local police officers on the street. They know full well about the problems of   cross-border policing—we have problems with Travellers in Cambridgeshire and adjoining counties, and police forces must work together because the crime linked to that mobile community often goes across county boundaries. The disruption and disorganisation that is being proposed, however, is not required.
	I have a rule that I call Paice's law, whereby when one joins all sorts of different organisations, one usually ends up with a central administrative system that is greater than the sum of the parts of its previous components. I have seen that on many occasions during my time in the House, and I believe that the same would happen with this proposal.
	It is terribly important that our policing is with public consent. Over the past few years, there has been increasing concern that we are getting policing of the public rather than policing with the public. Policing with the public is critical, and these proposals will make the situation worse.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: In a democratic system, policing will always be a delicate task. The essential art is to persuade the general public that what is happening is in their best interests, and to persuade them that the amounts of money that the police force costs are more than justified. When the Government decide, for whatever reason, that they will change that massive and important service, it is essential that the reason and the basis for that should be clear. My   difficulty is that I believe that the Government's suggestions, first, for a truncated timetable and, secondly, for a number of imposed decisions, write parameters for what is a very important change without taking account of the need for public support.
	Most of my constituents, who support the police 100 per cent., hope that they will have very little to do with them. They hope that they will never have to call a policeman, that they will not have their homes burgled, and that they will not be assaulted. Essentially, however, they want to know that those services are there if they are required. The Government, it seems to me, have a special responsibility to spell out what sort of changes will be introduced and how they will improve the service before such a degree of change is carried forward. I was surprised, for example, that the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety had been to the City of London and said, apparently with some effusion, that its force was not only very good but one that she hoped that others would copy. Since the City of London has perhaps 1,000 officers, I found that interesting and slightly perplexing.
	For the small county forces, a number of arguments can be generally accepted. Other Cheshire Members will undoubtedly tell the House that we have such a superb force of such incredible intelligence and energy that it is capable of solving all the problems of policing in a rural and urban area. That is not my attitude. I believe that there is now a real perception gap between the householder and the police.
	In my constituency, no matter how often we talk about neighbourhood policing, someone who has a gang of young people on their doorstep tearing down fences and wrecking their gardens wants an immediate response. They do not want to wait two hours for a car that passes by at the end of the street. If a number of hazards are being posed by antisocial families and people are being assaulted, they do not want to ring their local police station and be transferred from one automatic voice to another before getting a response. They want someone who will be there when they are in difficulty.
	Will the changes make that easier or more complex?   My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), it seems to me, made a watertight case about the difficulty of simply considering units in terms of numbers and geography. I am happy to accept that the normal flow of co-operation should be between north Wales and Cheshire. It would be a very brave Home Secretary, however, who suggested that Crewe should be the automatic centre for a police force consisting of north Wales and other areas in the north-west of England. However, I think that we will face that situation.
	I was delighted that the Home Secretary said plainly that he does not approve of a national police force, because that is the logic of the arguments that we have heard from the Government. If one cannot organise into small units, one puts them into regions, and if one cannot put them into regions, one puts them into bigger units. One does that not on the basis of what is the bulk of normal policing—dealing with assaults, car crime and ordinary difficulties on the streets—but because one is facing difficulties in several highly specialised fields. If that is so, let us debate the implications of that in the House, and let it be clearly spelt out. So far, that has not been the case.
	There is far more in these proposals. The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) spoke about the British Transport police. Why have they been included in proposals yet again? They have been subject to five reviews in five years, which, even for central Government, is probably slightly otiose. Since 70 to 80 per cent. of the work of the British Transport police is precisely what is called level 1 crime, one must have a very good argument before suggesting that they should be absorbed by the Metropolitan police. The British Transport police form a specialised unit. Its officers must have special training before being allowed on to the railway system, and they are clearly committed to a particular type of policing. If it is possible that in the future a member of the British Transport police will find that those brilliant Virgin trains are crossing the border into Scotland, but the British Transport police can do nothing about it because they are attached to the Metropolitan police, I may not be the only one to foresee difficulties. That, however, is the sort of proposition that we are hearing tonight.
	I want to make it very clear that I am totally opposed to the absorption by the Metropolitan police of a specialised police force such as the British Transport police. I do not care what anyone says; in a very short time, the specialised force would cease to have an individual existence. It would so rapidly be used for other jobs and become involved in other functions that it would lose its specialised knowledge. Believe me, railways are extremely dangerous places, and that does not apply just when there are explosions. It applies to normal, day-to-day dealings with passengers and services. Railways are places in which people should not blunder about on the assumption that being part of the Metropolitan police confers God-given responsibility. That is not an acceptable point of view.
	Let me express one opinion very strongly. I am disturbed that in the rush to come up with a solution, the House is being stampeded into arguing a fragmented case relating to a number of small areas. In defending the west midlands or debating whether north Wales should logically be involved with Cheshire, we are missing the point of the argument. The Government have a long time in which to decide what they want to do. They should give us a much more detailed and much more serious set of reasons for their wish to pursue the changes.
	If the Government seriously imagine that the whole problem can be solved on a formulaic basis, let me say this to them. It does not matter which part of the United Kingdom we are discussing. I represented Exeter once. Exeter regarded Bristol as the outer darkness then, and the Cornish regarded the rest of the peninsula as entirely unacceptable. If we simply ordain that so many thousand members of a force should go somewhere irrespective of the wishes of local people, we shall soon discover something very obvious. Neighbourhood policing is just that: it means policemen and policewomen who can be seen, and who respond to letters.
	The Secretary of State did something that I cannot do. He persuaded my chief constable to write a letter to me, and to send three e-mails. They were not very effective, because I did not do what he wanted, but the Secretary of State persuaded him to write to me. I could not persuade him to write to me answering questions about my own population.
	Do I care about what is being proposed? Yes, I do. Do I think that it will work? I have grave doubts. Do I wonder why the Home Office is pushing this through? I am astounded, but perhaps the answer lies in the Minister of State's views on the City of London police: as long as we all have fraud departments, we shall be able to cope with the future.

Crispin Blunt: It is always a   pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), who chaired the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee when I was a member of it during an earlier Parliament. As usual, I agreed with a great deal of what she said, which may explain why Her Majesty has yet to receive advice that the hon. Lady should be invited to join her Privy Council. I hope that the oversight will be rectified in due course.
	As a Surrey Member, I am well aware that the two   most recent chief constables in Surrey have been Sir Ian Blair and Denis O'Connor. They may not be entirely happy when I say what consummate politicians they both are. We should read Denis O'Connor's words with great care, and take account of his reservations about the applicability of his report to police restructuring as a whole. My understanding is that he was invited to consider just one—albeit important—aspect of restructuring, but the Government have taken the report to apply to the police in general.

David Gauke: When we read the various parts of "Closing The Gap" that deal with protective services, we see that Denis O'Connor is not quite as unequivocal as the conclusions may suggest. Under the various headings relating to protective services, he raises a number of doubts over whether larger strategic forces will make much difference.

Crispin Blunt: My hon. Friend is right. Given the detail, time is needed for all involved in the debate to establish whether the Government's case for restructuring has been made.
	It is the speed with which the Government have sought to impose the most dramatic reform of police structures for over 40 years that concerns us all. When police forces are to be driven into marriages that they do not want, we can be pretty certain that they will have plenty of time to repent at leisure. Others have quoted much less complimentary observations by members of the Association of Police Authorities than I intend to quote about the Government's use of incentives to persuade police forces to sign up to their proposals. My principal concern relates to the destruction of the county-wide forces, which will take control of the police from identifiable and accountable bodies and place it in the hands of amorphous regions with which my constituents in particular do not identify.
	Although today's debate focuses on the regionalisation of county constabularies, the reforms seem to make sense only as an element of the Government's incessant desire to regionalise the public services on which our constituents rely. The fire control room in Reigate is about to be moved to Fareham in Hampshire, and according to information from our ambulance service that reached my in-tray today, we should prepare for the regionalisation of the service. In each case, accountability is being taken from elected county councillors who speak up for the people of Surrey and dispersed over ever larger and more cumbersome regions.
	We in Surrey are currently missing an opportunity to bring health structures into line with county structures such as social services as health services are reorganised yet again. Strangely enough, we seem to be returning to the regional health authorities that we had in 1997. Every time a structure takes root, the Government want to rip it out and replant it. Four or five years later, they revert to the original structure. That costs an enormous amount and makes the organisations involved much less accountable. Even we, who are trying to address the issues in a full-time professional manner, have great difficulty in understanding who does what.
	I am also worried about the cost of the restructuring, to which others have referred. In Surrey, it is estimated at some £28 million. I am not remotely surprised that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) do not want the Kent force to merge with Surrey. As may be pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), neither the Sussex nor the Kent force will want to merge with Surrey on financial grounds alone. Surrey is in a desperate financial position. In 1997, it was one of the best-funded forces in the country, with a crime prevention record second only to that of Gwent. Its reward for being so successful in crime prevention has been to see its budget reduced, reduced and reduced.

Mark Harper: My hon. Friend may be confused about the motivation. In paragraph 6.8 of the financial section, "Closing The Gap" suggests a possible reason for the restructuring. It notes that
	"real term settlements in the next two years are likely, at best, to be half the rate of the last nine."
	It is possible that the Government hope to reorganise in order to mask the fact that police forces are to receive much less in the next two years.

Crispin Blunt: That would not entirely surprise me. There must be an explanation that makes rather more sense than the one that the Government gave today.
	Despite the under-resourcing of Surrey police over the past eight years, they have managed to perform outstandingly well—perhaps owing to the leadership of Sir Ian Blair and Denis O'Connor. To their credit, they were not only accomplished politicians but extremely good policemen in Surrey, which is no doubt why they have gone on to take wider responsibilities
	A high level of performance does not seem to matter to the Government. To them, it seems, only size matters. They have hung on to the number of 4,000 to determine the level of protective services rather like a drowning man saying, "This is the magic figure." It does not strike me as a magic figure at all. Some small forces deliver an extremely high quality of service, and some much larger services—the merged Avon and Somerset force, for example—receive a much lower score in the national assessment than Surrey.
	A graphic demonstration of what has happened to Surrey relates to financial matters. County councillors have been forced to find 46 per cent. of Surrey's funding for the next financial year from the council tax payer, in comparison with only 15 per cent. in 1997. If the Government take away from the county structure the control, accountability and responsibility for the Surrey police force, at what price will councillors vote increasing council tax precepts to support their force? In fact, it will no longer be their police force. They should dump the financial mess—that is my recommendation—in the laps of the Government, because the police will be a governmental organisation accountable to no one. I would oppose Surrey councillors who supported an increase in police precepts in that context. They should fight it as hard as they possibly can when it is no longer their police force.

Philip Dunne: Will this not become a precursor of, and excuse to introduce, a regional assembly in order to provide proper accountability? Not only that, it will presumably be a regional assembly with tax-raising powers.

Crispin Blunt: My hon. Friend is precisely on the mark. It is important to establish what underlies all these different proposals to reform different parts of public services: they are all relentlessly driving towards the regional level. It is ironic that the Home Secretary is now promising extra funding to forces that agree to the mergers early, while refusing to guarantee funding to the county forces that understandably remain wary of these reforms.
	I recall that, when the Conservative Government promised extra funding to schools that were keen to apply for grant-maintained status, the Labour party accused us of bribing schools to follow our agenda, yet the Home Secretary is content to use the threat of withholding funding to bully county forces into mergers about which they have grave reservations. The only difference between then and now is that schools were then only too enthusiastic to take control of their own affairs and secure grant-maintained status. If Conservative policy had stayed in place, every school would have had control of itself through grant-maintained status. That seems rather similar to what is in the recent White Paper, but it has taken a long time to get there.
	While I believe that the restructuring of police forces along regional lines is foolhardy in terms of financing and operational effectiveness, my greatest concern remains the impact on accountability and recognition of the police force for the people it serves. The reform will affect the relationship between my constituents and their local police. We bemoan the fact that the police are seldom face to face with the public. Over the past 30 years, the personal relationship between the police and the people they serve has been undermined. There is absolutely no way that the proposals will help to overcome that problem.
	There are arguments in favour of assuming responsibilities at the national level, and the example of soccer was mentioned earlier. There are also arguments for having smaller borough units with specific local duties: to their credit, the Government are making progress on that. There is no argument, however, to justify vast regional forces that have no emotional or logical connection with the populace that they serve. A south-east regional force would not be responsive to the huge range of challenges faced in areas as different as Reigate or Redhill in my constituency, the outer suburbs of the capital, the ports of Sussex and Kent, our nation's two busiest airports or the vast swathe of rural areas in the south-east. Nor will my constituents recognise a regional force as one directly responsible to a body that they either elected or could identify with.
	We are entitled to conclude that another agenda beyond the mere restructuring of the police is behind the proposals. The Government are set on regionalising the United Kingdom, taking powers from historic counties and granting them to new regional assemblies. The happy failure of the people of the north-east to support a regional assembly, despite an acknowledged strong sense of regional identity there, does not seem to have deterred the Government at all.
	In Surrey, the Government are moving the police force, fire service, hospitals and ambulance services to a regional level away from county structures. If the Government's reforms remove the local education authorities, the county council will become a largely redundant body—and it is surely no coincidence that county councils are rarely in the hands of Labour administrations. The counties are being emasculated to make way for bodies even more beholden to central Government, with no thought for the traditional elected bodies of the old counties and the people who identify with them. The police restructuring is but a part of that agenda and the cost will not be substantial only in monetary terms, because it will make our police even more remote from the people whom they serve.

Mark Todd: First, I appreciate that there are some powerful arguments in favour of building a critical mass in resources and applying that to serious crime and to counter terrorism. I am not unsympathetic to the Home Secretary's arguments in his opening speech or to the arguments of the O'Connor report. My concern has been partly about the process—arguments about the time frame within which we are having to consider such a complicated matter have already been aired—and partly about the narrowing of options too early in that process.
	The assumption has been made that full force amalgamation is the only acceptable way to proceed, but two options, partly aired in the debate, have been discounted. One is to form more specialist forces to deal with particular activities, as in the case of the transport police, and the other is the sharing of resources co-operatively across different parts of the country to achieve common objectives. Those options were posited as possibilities in the O'Connor report, but were discounted by the Home Office in the rather too hasty process of reaching a conclusion.
	The concept of co-operation has been explored in limited fashion in the east midlands. We have a helicopter service that is shared perfectly happily between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and it is a successful and efficient service. My concern—to some extent, I am arguing against my own position—is the difficulty of pushing police forces that constantly seek to run their own empires and agendas into that logical step.
	I am perfectly clear—I agree with the Home Secretary on this—that to have back-office operations run separately in 43 different police forces is simply crazy and mistaken. Having purchasing functions running in the 43 forces is similarly mad—not just on account of the waste of resources, but in respect of the technologies that the police require, running from the rudimentary ones such as police cars through to individual information systems. It is true that some forces, including the Derbyshire force, have made powerful reputations for scientific advance that should certainly be shared across a number of forces. It is crazy to have just one beacon of expertise.

David Taylor: My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the cost savings that may be available, but such savings may be a necessary but not a sufficient requirement. Does he agree that the level of cost savings suggested is no more than about 2 per cent. and that the co-operation and collaboration that he mentioned is already happening?

Mark Todd: I would like to return to that point when I debate costs and savings later in my speech.
	I am also concerned about the narrowing of options relating to regionalism. Until I heard the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) refer to the extraordinarily unique nature of Staffordshire crime, I was tempted to explore the opportunity of co-operation between the Staffordshire and Derbyshire forces. That would have put together two relatively powerful forces to the benefit of people in that part of the country, but he claimed that Staffordshire criminals are unique and that we could not possibly proceed on that basis, so I must defer to the Home Office's guidance on this issue. However, given that I represent a constituency that is right on the border of a region, it is perhaps natural for me to take the view that the drawing of such a hard and narrow dividing line does not at all reflect criminal patterns.
	I have two worries about the options being pursued: the possible loss of local focus, intelligence and awareness in addressing lower-level criminality; and the likely redirection of resources from well-policed, lower-level crime areas such as mine, toward areas within the new regions where policing has been ineffective. It might be possible to address those two concerns, which is why I have taken a qualified position in my conversations with Home Office Ministers. I do not start from a position of innate support for these proposals, but I could be persuaded to support them if it can be demonstrated that there are ways of dealing with my concerns.
	First, is it possible to strengthen basic command unit representational frameworks? For example—I have used this example in meetings—we in South Derbyshire have an extremely successful crime and disorder partnership. I recognise that that is not repeated in all parts of the country, but it provides a relationship model in my area that the police could work comfortably with in strengthening operational activities. I want some flexibility. Instead of simply opting for a local authority model involving a police committee, for example, let us look at local examples that work and that work with the existing grain.
	I would not want to turn such a partnership into a rigid framework. The strength of our partnership has been the mutually respectful voluntary framework within which it has worked. Local people in South Derbyshire tend to work practically together to solve problems without doing a lot of grandstanding and point scoring among themselves. That strength would be lost if someone threw the pot of money into the equation and said, "You're going to have to carve up exactly how this is to be dealt with in a very practical way", or if such people had too much direct operational control over policing in their area. What we have works very well and we should work with the existing grain.

Tom Levitt: My experience of Derbyshire constabulary is just as positive as my hon. Friend's, but does he agree that it does not matter where the constabulary headquarters is based? In fact, many people in Derbyshire probably could not name the town in which it is currently based.

Mark Todd: Indeed. It happens to be based in Ripley, but my hon. Friend makes a powerful point. South Derbyshire is at the bottom end of a long county, and the people who live there tend to think that most places are a long way away, so locating the headquarters some distance away is not one of my major concerns. People will think that it is a long way away wherever it is located, and, as my hon. Friend says, many people do not know where it is located now.
	I turn to my second point, which is the redistribution of resources. Here, I will be blunt. We heard earlier some brief interventions from Nottinghamshire Members and I well understand their desire to move ahead with the combining of forces in that area. However, they must understand that their desire and anxiety is matched by an anxiety on the part of those in better performing areas that such a combination may involve the redistribution of resources. That has also to be balanced by the recognition that Nottinghamshire has a higher expenditure on policing per head than does Derbyshire. I have heard the argument that we will get our hands on a larger pot and that that would be great, but the greater anxiety is that a lot of that pot will go toward solving problems in the Nottinghamshire area and away from better policed areas with relatively limited resources, such as mine.
	I turn to the process of transition. Such restructuring will be disruptive in all sorts of ways. In any merger, substantial career decisions have to be made that inevitably lead to distraction—there is no way round that. The cost of the east midlands option has been estimated at a little over £100 million and although that is a back-of-an-envelope calculation at this stage, the sum involved will certainly be large. The police authority has rightly said that it is very difficult to commend such an option without first knowing where the money will come from. If it comes from the normal expenditure of the newly created authority, that will inevitably mean cuts in other activities while the transition takes place. The authority also predicts an ongoing expenditure increase, simply to bring that part of the country up to the standards for protective services that the O'Connor report identifies as desirable. The question of how to distribute resources within the new authority is arguable; nevertheless, it is a fair question and it needs to be resolved now.
	I finish by pointing to the differences in policing function within my region. I am sorry, in a way, that the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr.   Paice) is no longer in his place. He shares with me an interest in Traveller law policy and I have to say that that policy is not the same in Derbyshire as it is in Leicestershire, for example—a fact that is well exploited by the people of those communities. I would not wish to see a blanket, lowest common denominator approach applied to policing policy, simply because we were required to have a strategic focus for policy development. Local differences are valuable and have been fought for, in this particular case, extremely hard by those such as me, who have directly engaged with this issue. I do not want the hard-won ground to be lost.
	I want harder answers to the questions that I have raised and I look forward to the response to this debate.

Martin Horwood: I am pleased to be taking part in this debate, just as I was pleased to take part in the recent Westminster Hall debate on this issue. Like other Members, I also look forward to having a debate that involves a substantive vote on the issue at hand.
	I thank the Home Office for agreeing to my request for a meeting at least to discuss the specifics of the proposed merger involving Gloucestershire constabulary. The granting of that request, which I appreciate, implies a welcome willingness to talk about the specifics. The specifics in Gloucestershire are clear: we have an outstanding police force and we have had an 8 per cent. reduction in crime in the past year. As my neighbour the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) said earlier, our constabulary has been commended for its record on level 2 crime, thereby rather undermining the stereotype of small forces presented by the Home Office.
	Specifics have been lacking in the Government's proposals. The "Closing the Gap" report refers to a lot of general trends and draws general conclusions from them. The Home Office's briefing, which we received in the past week, contains an impressive-looking chart showing the shortfall in protective service scores by force officer strength, and shows a trend line implying that only large forces can really cope. However, although it shows all six of the forces with an officer strength of above 4,000 scoring less than a 40-point shortfall in protective services, it also shows—this is not implied by the trend line—that 11 smaller forces have a 40-point shortfall, or less. Therefore, one size does not really fit all in this debate, despite the Government's attempts to suggest otherwise.
	It is instructive to note that the forces with more than 4,000 officers—and which the "Closing the Gap" report therefore describes as those successful in tackling crime—are generally in metropolitan, urban areas: the Metropolitan police themselves, the West Midlands police, West Yorkshire police, Merseyside police, and so on. There is no reason why that model of success in large urban areas will necessarily succeed if it is applied to much larger geographical areas, including large rural areas. There is an immediate geographical problem in the south-west: the sheer size of the option 1 proposal for a mega-force for the entire south-west, which would cover 9,000 square miles. There are parts of north Gloucestershire that are closer to Scotland than they are to the opposite end of that area—the Scilly Isles. If hon.   Members are worried about different types of crime, I can tell them that we have very different crimes to the Scilly Isles. There is not much trawler crime in Cheltenham.
	The Home Secretary mentioned economies of scale and implied that press offices could be merged. That seems a marginal point, but let us take him at his word. Is he seriously suggesting that the same connection to the local community that the present county force has could be achieved by someone trying to relate to the local media—which are important when trying to get the crime prevention message across—all the way from Tewkesbury to the Scilly Isles? I just do not think that that would be possible. Much more seriously, does the Home Secretary really think that democratic accountability and the same sensitivity to local needs would be possible? Many hon. Members have pointed out that they meet their chief constables regularly and we have all had good communications with them in the course of discussions on the Government's proposals. I   cannot conceive how that would be possible with a chief constable based miles away in Exeter who was trying to deal with MPs from the entire south-west region.
	What about the cost and disruption? The Association of Police Authorities estimates start-up costs of £500   million to £600 million nationwide. In the south-west, our chief constable has estimated £64   million of start-up costs. If that was paid for out of borrowing, and landed an annual debt on the police forces instead of being raised through the council tax, he estimates that it would cost some £6 million a year initially, which would offset more than half of the possible savings that the proposals suggest would be possible in the south-west. Most of the rest of the savings could be achieved through collaboration and federation and would not require the merger of forces. The numbers do not add up.
	The Home Secretary said in his opening remarks that the evidence was straightforward and he cited the "Closing the Gap" report, which is the only piece of evidence that the Home Office has. However, as has been said, the detailed suggestions in that report are somewhat qualified. On page 11, under the heading "Stakeholders have mixed views", it admits:
	"Little work has been done on the way in which members of the public identify with police forces".
	The connection between communities and the new forces is far from proved.
	On page 25, the report makes the point, which I made earlier, that basic command units are already getting larger, not smaller. That undermines the Government's point on that score. On page 35, the report admits that there is only a rough correlation between size and reactivity at level 2, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of the Government's position.

Peter Luff: My hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) earlier quoted from a report prepared for West Mercia constabulary by Professor Lawrance of the university of Warwick. He states:
	"The conclusions drawn in respect of the 4,000 minimum force size almost totally ignore the variability of protective services performance at each force size, and no evidence is provided that this will be small at the 4000 level. In short, there will be an unknown number of good and poor performers in reformed larger forces."
	The whole statistical basis of the "Closing the Gap" report is fundamentally flawed, and the 4,000 figure has no justification in empirical fact.

Martin Horwood: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, who would agree with my chief constable, who said that the report contained some challengeable assumptions and selective analysis. The statistical basis and the methodology are far from proven. The report also suggests to Ministers that in terms of geography
	"the scale and demography may require a measure of pragmatism in proposals for change."
	We see no evidence of that yet, but I live in hope.

Roger Williams: My hon. Friend makes a good case on behalf of rural areas and police authorities. The Government's proposals would not be such a problem if the consultation had been meaningful, but it is meaningless in Wales because the Secretary of State has already said that there is only one option—a single Welsh police authority. It is therefore hardly surprising that the police authorities are unwilling to take part in the consultation.

Martin Horwood: Many hon. Members have made the point about the worrying lack of consultation on the proposals and the speed at which they are being rushed through.
	I shall quote one further passage from "Closing the Gap", which appears on page 62 and is, I suppose, the straightforward evidence to which the Home Secretary referred. It states:
	"To conclude, the answers to the two questions that prefaced this section are: The current structure of policing probably does not support the efficient and affordable provision of protective services and support services; and yes, there is evidence that changes in that structure might provide a more efficient basis for service provision."
	Probably? Might? That is not straightforward evidence. Denis O'Connor's report does not provide the cast-iron basis for the Government's proposals that Ministers claim. The O'Connor report is, if read in detail, a call for a debate about the alternatives. It presents a genuine problem—and hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that there is a problem in the tackling of level 2 crime. It has also been suggested that the Cambridgeshire force has a particular problem with some of its issues, although that may be a little unfair. Nobody suggests that we should not try to tackle the problems that the report identifies, but the detail in the report does not make the case for the large super-forces. It makes the case for a debate on the alternatives.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr.   Oaten) suggested one alternative, which would be to extend the Serious Organised Crime Agency model, which the Government have only just started to try out. There have been suggestions that forms of federation might be tried. In Gloucestershire, we discussed the possibility of going back to regional crime squads in some form for specific forms of crime. That might tackle some of the shortfall issues of particular forces. Some back-office functions could also be merged—the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) mentioned purchasing. There is no reason why purchasing powers could not be merged on whatever regional basis the Government like. We could live with that. The Home Secretary could even have his merged regional press offices, if he really wants them.
	There is potential and much discussion to be had on the different options, and the Government simply have not made the case for a structural solution to a problem of how work is done. That is the same approach that they take to the probation service, the NHS and regional fire centres. It is about trying to shoehorn a problem into a structural solution instead of looking at the quality of work—in this case, policing—that is being done and using the inspectorate of constabulary for what it was set up to do, which is to help police forces to improve where there is a shortfall and to encourage them to collaborate.
	In Gloucestershire, there is all-party opposition to rushing headlong into the abolition of the local force. The Prime Minister told us recently—admittedly, in another context—that what the police asked for, they should get. The police force and the chief constable in Gloucestershire are clear that the best option is a stand-alone force for the county and an independent Gloucestershire constabulary. I think that we should obey the Prime Minister's advice and give the police what they want.

Ashok Kumar: I spoke in the Westminster Hall debate and expressed some of my serious concerns about the reforms that the Government are introducing. I am not against reform; I agree that reforms are necessary and we need to make changes. However, like many other hon. Members on both sides of the House, I am concerned that we are rushing into making major reforms and changes. There has been some debate about when the reforms were introduced, but that was 40 or 50 years ago. Surely we want to get reform right. That is crucial.
	On Teesside, we feel that the reforms are being bulldozed through by the Government—my Government, whom I support wholeheartedly. Before anybody says that I am being disloyal, I point out that I   have supported my Government on every occasion and have never even abstained on an issue. I speak as a friend, and with great concern. I am concerned about the proposals, and I say that not as someone who parachuted into a constituency. I lived in my constituency for 21 years before I was elected as a councillor and then a Member of Parliament. I have served the area and I know it well, so the concerns that I express are based on observation over several years. I   am concerned by the changes that are being pushed on us so quickly.
	Why cannot we have more time? The shadow Home Secretary suggested six months, although that is not necessarily the option that I would suggest. The Minister should go away and think about the time scale, because it is essential. My police authority has asked what approach the Home Secretary will take towards police authorities that do not submit a business case by 23 December. I shall be interested to hear the answer.
	I have expressed serious concern about the timing and the rush because I recognise that policing is an important issue in my constituency. At meetings and coffee mornings over the years, it has always been one of the top three topics. I have taken issue with Cleveland police in the past. Some Members may remember that I   championed the robocop, Ray Mallon, when corruption charges were levelled against him, yet he now holds a senior position, running Middlesbrough. Many of the people who told me not to support him now visit his office and say what a great job he is doing. That includes some Ministers.
	I take a great interest in Cleveland police—how the force is managed, how it functions and its accountability. The Government's proposed model for us is the super-force, a merger of the Northumbrian, Durham and Cleveland forces. It would cover a massive geographical area—according to one calculation, more than 3,500 square miles, from Berwick-upon-Tweed in the north to Boulby in the south. The southern parts of that region would have more affinity with North Yorkshire than with the Northumbrian region. Such a force would serve a huge area.
	I cannot understand the Government's thesis that bigger is better. It seems to be a running theme. On one hand, we are reforming education by transferring power to local areas, as the White Paper suggests—great; a good idea—while on the other hand, in reforming the health service and our fire services, we are moving to regional level. I do not understand that. There is a lack of joined-up thinking.
	I do not share the view expressed by Tory Members that there is a hidden agenda for regional government. That is not so, but I want my Government to demonstrate that we are advancing an intellectually coherent case. We must do so, to win hearts and minds. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee said that we must carry the people with us. That is essential.
	In Cleveland, our chief constable, Sean Price, has worked hard to turn things around. Earlier, a question was asked about chief constables visiting different parts of a constituency. Sean Price has attended meetings in many villages in my constituency, but I cannot see a chief constable based in Newcastle travelling 70 miles down the road to hold meetings in my little villages. I would like to believe that he would turn up, but I think it would be a struggle. The present chief constable has worked hard to win hearts and minds in small villages in my constituency.
	The chairman of the police authority, Councillor Dave McLuckie, and the chief constable have worked hard to ensure that crime is down. Burglaries and robberies are down and they should be praised for that and all their work tackling crime over the past few years.
	Feeling about the issue is strong. The shadow Home Secretary cited a MORI poll carried out by Cleveland police. It demonstrated that 70 per cent. of people want no change at all. When they were asked for their second preference, 60 per cent. supported a city region police force. When Tyne Tees, the television company, asked people what they thought, 78 per cent. said they wanted no change. That is how strong feeling is. Only 20 per cent. of people support a regional force, so there is a vacuum. I support an elected regional assembly, but we should remember that we were thwarted on that last year. Bearing in mind how strong feeling is, the Minister should take note of those figures.
	An additional problem in Teesside is that we have the biggest concentration of petrochemical plants, and the   emergency services really work together. If changes are introduced there will be disruption. Change will not be systematic. I fear for the future if a regional force is introduced. The Minister must think carefully about the concerns I have expressed. If we are to introduce reforms, we must demonstrate that they are necessary; the public must be behind us.
	We held a referendum about the regional assembly and about an elected mayor for Middlesbrough. If the Minister believes that there is strong support for a regional force or a super-force, we should put the matter to a referendum. I am clear about what will happen. The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) is shaking, but if democracy was okay for issues such as electing a mayor and regional government, why not for our police force? If there is support, I will accept the verdict of the electorate, but given the figures I presented I am clear about which way our people would vote.
	I speak to the Minister as a friend and with great concern, and ask the Government to reconsider. I may not be able to support the reforms if Ministers go ahead without considering the things that I have asked them to note.

Elfyn Llwyd: As I was listening to the Home Secretary open the debate, I was underwhelmed. There is a lack of evidence to support his case. For some time, I have been tabling questions to the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety asking for the evidence base for that magical number, 4,000. Eventually, at paragraph 1.11 of the O'Connor report, I stumbled on the answer.
	Before I address the report, however, I have a few brief comments about Welsh police forces in general. A recent report—in March—from Her Majesty's inspectorate stated that Gwent force
	"is particularly successful at investigating all classes of crime and enjoys one of the highest detection rates in England and Wales. Gwent Constabulary has also reduced overall crime, and particularly the offences of burglary and vehicle crime".
	The report states that in the North Wales force there were
	"significant improvements in performance during the past year . . . particularly in the area of investigating crime. The force has also embarked on an ambitious neighbourhood policing programme that will see 229 community beat managers deployed to wards within the force. Managing the transition while maintaining performance and meeting demand will be a challenge, particularly when, at the same time, a central communications centre will be established".
	The report on South Wales police says:
	"The force has reduced recorded crime in all areas including violent crime. Additionally, it has also maintained a good level of crime detection and has performed well in relation to its peers, delivering good performances in a number of areas. The force has a good record of detecting crime and is well placed to deal with serious and major crime with its dedicated serious and major crime investigation teams."
	If that is not a clean bill of health, I am not sure what is.
	I mentioned my own authority of North Wales police. Burglary in north Wales is at its lowest level for 30 years. Vehicle crime is down by 22 per cent. and robberies are down by 28 per cent. All three divisions of the North Wales force are performing brilliantly and topping the performance leagues for England and Wales in many categories, so one must ask once more why we are talking about such reorganisation.
	The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) was right: the proposal for the Welsh forces would create a national police force because one force would cover Wales. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar) said that his chief constable might be hard pressed to travel 70 miles to meet him, but the equivalent distance in Wales would be 250 or 300 miles, which would be absolutely impossible to cover.
	Paragraph 1.11 of the O'Connor report is not a hard and fast statement because there are qualifications in its wording. It says:
	"Forces with over 4,000 officers, or 6,000 staff, tended to meet the standard across the seven protective services measured, in that they demonstrated good reactive capability with a clear measure of proactive capacity. Forces below that size tended to fall someway short of the standard, with, in general, the smallest forces faring the least well. Notwithstanding this, there are outliers: some smaller forces were almost as successful as the majority of larger forces, whilst two relatively large forces (5,000+ staff) received surprisingly low scores."
	It is thus hardly written in stone that the 4,000 figure must be followed. Curiously enough, not one of the Welsh forces has a manning of more than 4,000, so we would be defeated on that criterion. However, as we were told earlier, that is not a hard-and-fast criterion. It is difficult to know what is going on because the consultation has been so poor that we do not know where the goalposts are, and whether they are still moving, or firmly in the ground.
	The chair of the North Wales authority has praised the Association of Police Authorities, which has said that it will not co-operate by 23 December. I will not cite words such as "inducement" to describe the Home Secretary's offer to those that fall in line early on, but that situation compounds the mismanagement of the whole process. Ian Roberts, the chairman of the North Wales authority, says:
	"We refuse to be rail-roaded"
	by the Home Secretary
	"because there are some very serious questions that remain unanswered."
	That is the general tenor of the debate because hon. Members simply do not know what will happen. They do not know where the finance will come from, or whether the change is the first step towards a national police force.
	The letter from the Association of Police Authorities has been quoted at length today. Its chairman, Bob Jones, says that there has been a certain amount of bullying into abolishing police forces with indecent haste. He says:
	"In our view, that is disgraceful. Policing is crucial to the safety and protection of all our communities. It is not for sale"—
	to that I say, "Hear, hear."
	On a matter of pure democracy, the National Assembly was not formally consulted on the proposals, despite the fact that it controls £144 million of the police budget in Wales. The Assembly recently supported an amendment that read:
	"The National Assembly condemns the recent hurried and superficial consultation by the Home Secretary on restructuring the constabulary, which failed to:
	a) formally consult the National Assembly
	b) fully consider Welsh circumstances; and
	c) make the case for change."
	That takes me back to where I started my speech: I do not believe that the Home Secretary has made the case for change.
	In case anyone is labouring under the misapprehension that I, as a nationalist, am against co-operation with other forces, let me say that I am proud of the fact that the North Wales force co-operates closely with Merseyside and Cheshire police. The same is true of West Mercia and Dyfed-Powys, and the situation is certainly the same for Gwent and South Wales forces and the Avon and Somerset police force. One of the excuses cited during the debate is the fact that small forces cannot deal with organised crime, but Gwent, South Wales and Avon and Somerset police forces recently cracked a serious crime ring in Bristol involving the most awful characters who were coming over fully armed to sell crack cocaine each day. Many of those people are now behind bars, which proves that co-operation works and can hold organised crime in check.

Peter Luff: One of the other reasons that the Home Secretary cites for forcing the proposals through at such an undignified pace is the need to help forces to cope with terrorist outrages. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Metropolitan police, which has nearly 32,000 officers, had 352 officers seconded to it to help it to cope with the 7 July bombings? Many of those officers came from Wales. Eight officers came from Dyfed-Powys, eight came from the North Wales force and many came from my own force of West Mercia. Many of those people are still there. The fundamental argument that we need such change to deal with terror outrages has been exploded—if hon. Members will excuse that unfortunate pun—by a devastating parliamentary answer that shows that that argument is flawed and that the Home Secretary should abandon the idea.

Elfyn Llwyd: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Let us remember that, unfortunately, the Met had been tailing those who were involved in the attacks for some time before 7 July. The Government are hiding behind a smokescreen in relation to terrorism and organised crime. Expertise is available. The hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) talked about extending SOCA, which I agree would be sensible, but whenever a terrorist incident has occurred, advice has been readily available within forces and from co-operative neighbouring forces. I do not buy the Government's argument in that respect.
	When the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister tried to persuade the House on the 90-day custody question, they did so on the basis of a conclusive case produced by the police—an expert case and one that was, to use the Prime Minister's words, "overwhelming" and "conclusive." The same police experts are definitely opposed to a hurried, half-baked reorganisation that has much to do with tightening the Home Secretary's stranglehold on a single police force in Wales, rather than dealing with four. Many of us are fearful: we remember the policing of the miners' strike.

ROYAL ASSENT

Madam Deputy Speaker: I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that Her Majesty has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
	Consolidated Fund Act 2005
	Regulation of Financial Services (Land Transactions) Act 2005

Police Restructuring

Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.

Paul Flynn: Before any reorganisation is authorised by the House, the case should be overwhelming. The last two Opposition speakers have made clear how weak the case is. The original report states the case for reorganisation in very tentative language and points out that some of the biggest police forces fall short in dealing with all levels of crime, whereas some of the smallest—including the Gwent, Dyfed-Powys and North Wales police forces—achieve remarkable results.
	It was once said that
	"we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."
	That was said by Gaius Petronius in AD66, and it remains true today. That is the experience that most of us have had of reorganisations. I have been an elected member of authorities for 33 years and I have seen many reorganisations, all promising to produce marvellous results. The first reorganisation of local government that I endured was based on the notion that big is beautiful, the second on the notion that small is beautiful. All of them duplicated jobs, despite promising reductions and all manner of efficiencies of scale, whether large scale or small scale. None delivered the promised improvements and all plunged the authorities affected into a period of upheaval.
	Probably the only groups of people who favour police reorganisation are the criminals, because they are likely to benefit, and some members of the police service, because they are ambitious and know that it is likely to produce many new and well paid jobs. In the year leading up to the reorganisation, the police will be able to say, "Of course our standards have dropped and we haven't arrested so many people or solved so many crimes, but that is because we are building up to reorganisation." Their excuse for the next two years will be, "We are in the middle of reorganisation." The worst period will come after that. Members of the National Association of Retired Police Officers have first-hand knowledge of what happened during the last reorganisation, which took place in 1965–66, and their evidence states that it took 10 years to get back to pre-reorganisation levels of efficiency. That is the key point. There is no case for changing. We have the tyranny of arithmetic determinism. Someone names a number—for example, 4,000—and everyone has to fit into this Procrustean bed of a false 4,000.
	We have a splendid police force in Gwent. It is at the top of the league, not only for last year or the year before that but for a period of 20 years. It is institutionally sound as well as administratively efficient. It enjoys enormous support from the public. The national approval rate is 78 per cent. What other service enjoys public confidence on that scale? It seems that we shall throw it away in response to a report that was not part of the Labour party's manifesto. There is no reason why we should be bound to the report. There is no ideology behind it. There is no reason why we should be supporting the report on the basis of party loyalty, or for any other reason. We are entirely free to vote against the report because it was not part of our manifesto.
	There is an extraordinary political situation in the House. There is a Liberal Democrat Green who wants to hug all the asylum seekers and who is splendidly politically correct. There will be great changes to the political structure in future. The last thing that we want is to have round our neck the albatross of a reorganisation that will be unpopular, with all the problems that will occur in future, which will be blamed on the reorganisation. We shall suffer that ignominy and blame in future elections.
	The report, as the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda) said, makes a weak case. We are offered the window dressing that it will solve the problem of terrorism. The same excuse was used for selling identity cards, but that was dropped. Identity cards will not solve the problem of terrorism. The other issue is drugs, to which a rational approach should be taken. The new leader of the Conservative party has a splendid, pragmatic view on drugs, which he demonstrated during his interrogation of witnesses who appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee when it was chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). The present Chairman of the Committee did not seem to reflect that view. I   believe that if the Leader of the Opposition continues to pursue the brave policy that he advanced then and during his leadership campaign election we will, for the first time in 30 years, have an intelligent debate about drugs in the House.
	We will solve the problem of drugs not through a reorganisation of the police but through a set of new laws. I spent the last weekend in a country that is not regarded as one that is successful on drug policy—Italy. The Villa Mariani in Rome operates a drugs policy that would be approved by many progressive people in the House. It is one of harm reduction, of needle exchanges and of treating drug addicts not as criminals and throwing them into prisons where there are drugs—and there are drugs in every one of our prisons in this country. It is a humane and practical policy that is pursued in collaboration with the police.
	Portugal has, over a five-year period, reduced the number of people who have died from drugs by 50 per cent.—an extraordinary achievement. The Netherlands, Belgium and Australia have reduced the number of deaths from drugs by taking an effective, practical and humanitarian approach to the problem. The structure of our police is completely irrelevant to that.
	Criminals will, of course, welcome a restructuring. During the reorganisation the police's attention will be on where headquarters will be, on who will get what job   and on who will be given what desk. Their attention will be distracted from the task of trying to catch criminals. They will be diverted by the black hole of reorganisation.
	We have heard about what happened in Wales; it is an extraordinary, marvellous story. Evidence was given on 27 October 2004 to the Welsh Affairs Committee. The four chief constables turned up to say that they did not want an all-Wales authority. One of them said—I had the pleasure of quoting it back to her—that she did not want to see a link between north Wales and south Wales. Exactly a year later, on 27 October 2005, she told us that she would like reorganisation on an all-Wales basis. We must not be too hard on the police, as ambition comes into play. Some very attractive jobs and career options will be created. It has been said that when Wales reorganises the chief constable will have a helicopter—the "super-copper with a chopper". However, benefits will not be delivered to the general public.
	As for costs, it is irresponsible to suggest that we should embark on such a programme when the police tax—it is more accurate to describe the council tax that way—will increase by up to 30 per cent. My area will be affected by equalisation between north Wales and Gwent, so our council tax or police tax will increase by an enormous amount—an increase of 13 per cent. next year is already being talked about. If we want more community police officers, it will increase by even more. We cannot be rushed into a decision by 23 December if there is no prospectus on costs at all. What on earth would the public make of that? The decision to reorganise forces has been rushed and has no rational basis. It will help only the criminals, and it will harm the structure of the police. It is reorganisation for reorganisation's sake, and we do not know whether big or small is beautiful. We know, however, that reorganisation, before it is introduced, must be based on a strong, powerful case. This is based on nothing.

Humfrey Malins: All Governments are, from time to time, guilty of the offence of hurrying to change or to legislate. This Government, I am afraid, are doing so too often. Pressures have been imposed on the people who have to respond. What chance is there of an inquiry by the Select Committee on Home Affairs into police restructuring and reorganisation? What discussions have taken place with bodies that operate on a county basis and which will be seriously affected, including the magistrates courts service, the Crown court service, the probation service and the Crown Prosecution Service? There has been no consultation with them whatsoever. The Home Secretary said that the time frames were challenging. Frankly, they are nothing short of a disgrace.
	I should like to say a word or two on behalf of Surrey, which is a small police force consisting of 1,959 officers. However, the great and the good deem it too small and "not fit for purpose". I invite them, however, to look at what Surrey has been able to achieve. Surrey police have made the county one of the safest in England, and they are consistently among the top five performers nationally. The latest results indicate that they have hit the top performance targets set for them by Surrey police authority in many different areas. They have cut robbery, vehicle crime and burglary. Surrey police are an excellent police force, and their success has been achieved despite Government help which, over the years, has decreased more and more. A succession of excellent chief constables—Sir Ian Blair, Denis O'Connor and the present chief constable, Bob Quick—and an excellent authority chairman, Liz Campbell, together with a dedicated police force in Surrey, have worked against a background in which, year after year, our grant has been cut. Surrey has one of the lowest grants per head of population in the country, and receives £88 a head compared with an average of £103 a head in the south-east.
	Surrey's difficulties will not be sorted out by an amalgamation with Sussex or anyone else, as they stem from the underlying funding instability of the past few years. So put that right and we could be on the road to solving Surrey's problems, by giving Surrey police increased flexibility in reconfiguring and modernising their work force, which they want to do. That, coupled with a fair financial settlement, would sort out Surrey's problems.
	I have talked to many in Surrey about possible amalgamations. Where do we go? Is Surrey keen to amalgamate with another force? In truth, its preferred option is to stand alone, without the need for a merger, by exploiting work force modernisation and by co-operating with neighbouring forces to share services and with some limited financial investment. That is a viable option for Surrey police force. If it must amalgamate, I suspect that its favoured option would be to do so with Sussex; but, in truth, I am not sure that Sussex wants to amalgamate with Surrey. So the real answer is to treat Surrey police fairly—give them a chance, and they will prosper—and the Home Secretary should never say that a force of 1,959 is too small to be effective.
	If I wanted to find the answer to two questions—what we think of our police forces, and what we want from—I do not think that I would go to a Whitehall mandarin; I would go and ask a victim of crime. What do the victims think? There is still huge respect for our police force. Many would say that we have the best police force in the world. Many would rightly say that our police have a magnificent record of responding to major disasters and terrorist attacks and of dealing with high-profile murders. On all the big things, there is tremendous respect for our police force in this country.
	Ask individuals about their localities and how happy they are with the policing that they get, however, and perhaps there would be a frown on their foreheads. They are not so sure that the service is what they want. Locally, individuals want the police to respond and react quickly when they are contacted. They want detection levels to go up. Above all, most people still want to see more police on the streets, and the truth is that, whatever the Government's plans and policies and whatever they have talked about over the past eight years, I think that there are fewer police on our streets, and people do not like it, for each of us is comforted and reassured by the presence of the police, by knowing them personally and by knowing that they get deeply involved in the community.
	If the police are deeply involved in the community, known to people, moving around, talking to people and learning about solving the minor crime—the graffiti, the assaults and the drunkenness—and if they take control of communities, not only do they get the intelligence to sort out low-level crime, but that way comes intelligence to sort out the very serious crime and to find out who is responsible for it. So one's contacts perhaps might fear that the amalgamations, the mergers and the whole principle that big is better is a flawed concept.
	Someone told me not long ago, "Everything in my life seems to be getting bigger and more remote. It's moving away from me. I don't feel that I have any real involvement." So my advice to the Government is very clear. They should avoid the steady march towards a regional police force system; it is the last thing that people want. They should not think that bigger means better; it does not. They should not think that centralisation is better than devolving powers to communities; it is not. They should understand that larger can mean more remote. They should also understand that, if they focus too much on the big issues, those at the bottom end of society will find that the issues that matter to them are ignored and left aside.
	So will it be in Surrey's interest to amalgamate? I   doubt it somehow. If it amalgamates with Sussex, performance may drop, things will be more remote and the financial resources may be sucked down to Brighton, Hastings or Gatwick. People in my constituency, Woking, will feel less involved, and they will feel that the police service is less accountable. The Government should remember that people in our communities are feeling increasingly left out and detached, and the more that we create big things, the more that they will feel remote and left out of our society.

Ian Lucas: I have concerns about the proposals because I am extremely proud of the progress that the Government have made in improving policing in Wrexham. When I was elected in 2001, one of the most common issues in my constituency was antisocial behaviour and crime. I had difficulty in dealing with those issues and referring them to the police because I could not contact identifiable officers for geographical areas in the constituency and I was not sure to whom to refer constituents. I am pleased to say that, in the Wrexham and in the North Wales police area today, we have identifiable community beat officers in each council ward. In addition, we have community support officers and neighbourhood wardens. We would like to have more neighbourhood wardens, but unfortunately the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives on the local authority voted against that.
	The Government have a tremendous record on neighbourhood policing and I know that my right hon.   Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and   Community Safety has personal experience and knowledge of policing in Wrexham. She came to Wrexham at a very difficult time and I am grateful for her support then. She has seen neighbourhood policing in its infancy and the way that it has developed since.
	My concerns are shared by my colleagues right across north Wales and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for already giving us a great deal of time. She has listened carefully to what we have had to say and she is aware of some of the arguments that have already been referred to in the debate so far. I will not discuss north Wales at length, because a number of colleagues have already raised the issue.
	I wish to consider specifically Denis O'Connor's report. I am a reformer and a great believer in police reform. Police reform has occurred substantively under this Government, but it has been opposed at many stages by the Opposition parties. I remember being in Committee when the introduction of community support officers was being discussed. That was opposed by the Opposition parties. I remember concerns being expressed about the extension of neighbourhood warden schemes, but I am very pleased that progress has been made.
	I welcome the assurances that have been given about the future of neighbourhood policing, but we must consider Denis O'Connor's report. I am not against the amalgamation of forces if it improves the level of policing that is afforded to my constituents. I am not against the amalgamation of forces if it improves the   operational capacity of the Wrexham force and the North Wales force.
	I have considered closely the proposals in Denis O'Connor's report, but I have also considered closely the statement by Chief Constable Giffard in his letter of 9 November this year to the chief constable of North Wales. It set out the reasons for recommending an all-Wales force, and it is worth quoting them in full:
	"The option meets the HMIC criteria on size of force and demonstrates the potential capacity to provide protective services to national standards without adverse impact on police services at the neighbourhood level."
	There is no dispute that an all-Wales force would have more than 4,000 officers; that is not an issue. However, I have seen no real evidence to date that suggests that protective services across Wales would be improved by the creation of an all-Wales force. If that evidence exists, I would like to see it. If it exists, it should be put before the public so they can see the evidence that suggests that policing would be improved.
	In the Welsh context, it is extremely important to consider the geographical area that would be covered by the all-Wales force. Five hours is not an unusual journey time from Holyhead to Cardiff and, from Wrexham, it takes three hours to get to Cardiff and four hours to Swansea. It is a huge area.
	When I read Denis O'Connor's report, I was struck by the stress that he places on the maintenance of local links. For example, he states:
	"the overall goal should be the creation of organisations that are large enough to provide a full suite of sustainable services, yet still small enough to be able to relate to local communities."
	It is difficult to see how a national Wales force could relate to local communities.
	Denis O'Connor also refers to criminal markets, which are very important in the improvement of level 2 activities such as collecting intelligence and dealing with serious organised crime. It is easily explicable that improved level 2 policing would occur with the closer integration of police services in Merseyside and north Wales because, as any police officer or magistrate in north Wales knows, there is an active criminal market that is common to both places. However, it is not easy to understand how a national Wales force will deal with those criminal markets more efficiently than present arrangements, as its structure will take no account of criminal markets.
	To date, the evidence has not been brought forward to support the proposed restructuring. I want my right hon. Friend the Minister to tell me how level 2 policing will be improved. How will there be better intelligence gathering in an all-Wales force? How will serious organised crime be better addressed? Will the fact that criminal markets, which Denis O'Connor describes as "fundamental", are ignored by the present proposal for an all-Wales force make any difference?
	I am concerned that neighbourhood policing may be undermined by an all-Wales force. I have heard and welcome the assurance that the basic command unit will remain the building block of policing, but I have concerns relating to finance, the foundation on which the building blocks stand. In particular, north Wales has invested more in policing than other parts of Wales, and its police precept is higher. If the police precept is standardised across Wales, the north Wales precept will necessarily be reduced. If that happens, will there be a call for services to move from north to south, where, after all, crime rates are higher? If resources are shifted, it will have a detrimental effect on neighbourhood policing in north Wales.
	In short, the case for an all-Wales force still needs to   be made, so that I can make it to my concerned constituents in Wrexham.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: I appreciate that there is already a time limit on speeches by Back Benchers in this debate, but if hon. Members are brief, a few more may be able to contribute, even at this late stage.

Stephen O'Brien: The Government claimed that the O'Connor report forced them to restructure our police forces. They started a panicky, so-called consultation exercise, which was too hasty, and now they are providing a financial bung to those who kowtow to them before the ridiculous deadline of Friday.
	A week last Wednesday, I asked the first question at Prime Minister's questions, when I mentioned an extraordinary letter from the chairman of my police authority, who is a Labour councillor. The Prime Minister said that a full consultation is taking place, but that is not what Cheshire police authority expects. In a letter that was copied to the Minister, Councillor Peter Nurse has stated:
	"Policing should be at the heart of our communities and your proposals do nothing to safeguard or develop this. Your timetable is so absurd that it is impossible for us to have a meaningful dialogue with our communities . . . Your direction in respect of Cheshire is severely flawed . . . Restructuring policing with such haste and without considering the long term implications is dangerous and not in the interests of the people of Cheshire."
	I have not yet seen a reply to that letter.
	Two days after Prime Minister's questions, I attended a meeting with Cheshire police authority and the chief constable, where I paid tribute to the hard work of the Cheshire constabulary and all the policemen and women within that force. Performance has been middling, and nobody would say that there is not vast room for improvement, but the force has specialist policing capabilities, and, as we have heard from Members on both sides of the House, it has engaged in fantastic collaboration with not only North Wales police, but   Merseyside police, Greater Manchester police, Staffordshire police and, in north Shropshire, West Mercia constabulary.
	My constituents in Cheshire are served by tailor-made collaboration, co-operation and co-ordination, while national threats are met by national strategies. In terms of a criminal market, as it was rather delicately put by the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), crime is either local or national. There is no such thing as regional crime. Logic does not impel the Government to design a response that is regionally based rather than nationally based or, as at present, locally based.
	What is the answer? It is not what is on offer in the House today. We are not allowed to maintain the status quo or to look across National Assembly or regional development agency boundaries; instead, we have to look at this precisely as the Government want us to, for the convenience of Ministers and Whitehall mandarins, who no doubt see it as a nice dotted line that will not disturb their administrative flows.
	We need to tell the Government to think again. This hasty timetable can easily be extended and the financial bung can be removed so that there is not a perverse incentive for rushed responses. There should be a proper, considered and serious response so that we get to the point where we have an organisation that is equal to the threats and meets the needs and demands of our local citizens. All the constituents whom I represent in south-west Cheshire want good collaboration with north Wales to continue. They do not need a national police force to make that happen, because it happens already. As we have heard from Welsh MPs, a national Welsh force is not needed either, for much the same reasons.
	When my good friend and neighbour, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), asked whether there should there be a national police force, the Minister replied with a categorical no. Let us therefore assume that it is not going to happen. I very much support that. We could, however, expand national organisations such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the British Transport police and the National Criminal Intelligence Service in order to collaborate, co-ordinate and co-operate nationally to deal with national threats, be that through counter-terrorism or anything else.
	Deep down, the consent of the British people is required for us to have confidence in our policing, because policing, as it was originally set up, has to be by the people and for the people, just like our mandate in this place.
	Not for the first time, the Government's proposal has been presented to the House in a panicky way, with no votes and no chance to make corrections—only an opportunity to urge a Minister who is not necessarily going to respond positively, although she is giving a good impression of listening. We are being offered a   false prospectus. This is not about improving the service of policing to my constituents; it is about mapping an organisation on to a pre-conceived regional agenda that has nothing to do with meeting the additional threat that my chief constable rightly said has   gone national, while continuing the local neighbourhood policing strategy. That is what is so inconsistent, and that is why we should not be shy of holding the Government to account and accusing them of issuing a false prospectus for an agenda and a strategy that is below-the-table stealth regionalisation that we should reject out of hand.

Tom Levitt: I welcome the fact that we are having a debate on police reform. We cannot divorce the idea of police structure from police functions. Having said that, I could not disagree more with the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) about the purpose of the rearrangement and the process that is being followed.
	It is worth stating that police reform is already well under way. Lots of things have been happening, and I   see them in my own constituency. We have significant new services in operation—for example, a mobile police station for rural areas. We have our first community support officers. We have £1.5 million of investment in a new police station in Glossop. We have had the very successful Operation Slipknot, whereby a major drugs ring was busted just a few weeks ago. Derbyshire has record numbers of police and has had a record fall in crime. That shows that things are working in my constituency as regards policing and the fight against crime. However, it is not a question of complacency, as there is much more to do.
	One of the first antisocial behaviour orders in the country was imposed in my constituency. ASBOs have been welcome in the Gamesley area, where unacceptable behaviour contracts are bringing young people to book and encouraging positive behaviour, not just punishing bad behaviour. We are seeing positive leadership from police officers in our county.
	I commend Derbyshire constabulary on being an active member of the local strategic partnerships that operate throughout the country. They advise others on how to work with other public services to help reduce crime across the board and to see what the police can do to help those other services deliver what they are there for as well. But most of all, we are seeing the development of neighbourhood policing. We are seeing the concept of the police officer in the allocated area with a telephone number and e-mail address, known to the people in the wards, building relationships, and that is working well. Only this weekend, a police constable said to me that, whatever happened at the top level, what was important was that the investment in neighbourhood policing should continue.
	That is the agenda behind this reform. It is not about centralising control in regions but about devolving power and responsibility to the divisional headquarters, to the BCUs, and into the neighbourhoods. That is exciting and to be commended. I wonder if there really is an hon. Member who has more contact with their chief constable than with their BCU chief superintendent. When I refer constituency cases to the police, it is to the divisional headquarters, not the constabulary headquarters; it is to the chief superintendent, not the chief constable. Of course, I have a good relationship with the chief constable. I have even been to a Derby County football match with him; that is how good the relationship is. [Interruption.] Yes, I know, but we have to make sacrifices in this job. This really is about decisions made at chief superintendent level.
	A few years ago, like a number of other speakers in this debate, I took part in the police service parliamentary scheme, and every aspect was a real eye-opener. I spent 22 days with police officers in Derbyshire and in the Metropolitan constabulary, really seeing what life was like on the front line for police officers. During that experience, I saw my first dead body. I helped to discover a cannabis factory. I found myself chasing down a street at night after a few kids with balaclava helmets and baseball bats, wondering what I was doing there. I was one of the first on the scene when an officer had been attacked with his own CS gas. We were searching an abandoned derelict building for young children who were missing at midnight. Those are the sort of pressures faced by our police officers, who are genuinely committed to what they are doing in the neighbourhoods as part of the strategy and regard themselves in Derbyshire as a police service rather than a police force.
	As I started the police service parliamentary scheme, the Airwave project was being introduced. Police officers were cynical about it. They saw it as a big Government IT system that was bound to fail and questioned its advantages, saying that they were quite happy with their police radios. At the end of my participation in the scheme, 18 months later, Airwave was well established, without any fuss, on budget and on schedule. People were saying that it was wonderful and asking why they had not had it before. That innate conservatism, scepticism and cynicism about whether it would work and produce results was there at the beginning, but Airwave did work and demonstrated that police authorities and services throughout the country could deliver on such issues.
	I do not mind whether we move to a Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire arrangement, or a wider east midlands arrangement. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), I do not think that it   matters where the headquarters is. What is important is that police are available in neighbourhoods. I also see this in the context of delivering more neighbourhood policies in families of schools, in primary care trusts with locality commissioning and in local authorities with   local area agreements. All those policies look to more neighbourhood control and influence and more sensitivity to the delivery of services at that level.
	This is an exciting set of proposals. I look forward to it being developed in harmony with the other proposals that are going on in different Departments, and I wish the Minister good speed and good luck with it.

Alistair Burt: Were an educated but ill-informed Martian to wander into this place and ask why this Government were both unpopular and had lost the confidence of professionals in the public services, we could do little better than refer him or her to the subject of this debate. In particular, had the Martian been observing this debate, he or she would conclude that any governing party that had the   hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs.   Dunwoody) on the Back Benches and the Home Secretary on the Front Bench was working in the wrong direction.
	The Government's handling of this matter is a microcosm of what they get wrong in three respects. First, the consultation process and time scale never do justice to the complexity and seriousness of the issue being considered. Secondly, there is always a hint of menace in the Government if one does not do what they ask. Thirdly, they do not learn from their mistakes.
	First, on the seriousness of the issues to be considered, we have heard plenty of serious speeches tonight. Had the Home Secretary approached the subject on the same basis as many of those speeches, which have called for longer to consider these matters, he would have been heard better. There are serious issues in relation to balancing local matters and larger-scale problems.
	I do not want the Minister of State to talk to me about terrorism. Bedfordshire police authority is still reeling from having £400,000 removed from its budget this year, which was previously paid to it to look after the policing at Luton airport and to cover anti-terrorism measures. Bedfordshire does not need lectures from the Government about the importance of tackling terrorism.
	We have not had answers in relation to serious issues such as accountability, the precept and other matters. Many colleagues mentioned the operational issue and asked whether forces will be moved from a low-crime area to a higher-crime area, bearing in mind that everything is run by targets and quotas these days. How can anyone in a low-crime area be sure that that will not happen when those who run the police force must respect the targets imposed by the Home Office?
	The police authorities of the eastern area met today and could agree on nothing except that they did not want a regional force. They had different ideas on everything else. The Bedfordshire police authority voted unanimously last Friday to reject the idea of mergers. The county council passed a motion saying that it did not want any of this. In dealing with policing matters that are so important to all of us, it takes some genius for a Government to get so many people against them who reckon that they have got it wrong.
	Secondly, there is the hint of menace from the Government. There is the time scale that suggests to the police authority that if it does not voluntarily co-operate and come up with a scheme, something will be imposed on it that it might not have wanted. If such an authority does not volunteer something quickly, money that might be available will be taken away. Which responsible senior officer could look at money that is available and decide not to go for it?
	Thirdly, the Government are failing to learn lessons. The last time that the Home Office tried to foist something on Bedfordshire that was ill thought through, had money thrown at it and seemed to deal with a national problem, it was called Yarl's Wood detention centre, which went down in flames because of the ill consideration behind it. The Government do not learn the lessons from how they did things.
	I asked parish councils in my constituency, which are affected by policing, what they thought of the proposals. I received 15 responses, three of which could be described as neither one way nor the other, while 12 were more or less vehemently against. One parish council summed it up succinctly. Mavis Knight, the clerk to Odell parish council wrote to me:
	"Dear Mr Burt, Thank you for your recent letter . . . At a recent meeting, Odell Parish Councillors were somewhat derisory of the whole process and felt it a waste of time to respond with any particular option as they are of the firm opinion that this government has already decided which option is to be adopted. They are probably right, but obviously you are not in any position to agree with that premise!!! Kind regards, Mavis Knight."
	I think that Mavis has got it bang right, and I agree with her absolutely.

David Taylor: I am pleased to contribute briefly to this debate. I   am aware that numerous colleagues also want to speak. I have often raised police issues in the Chamber—I have family links with the police, I have been a magistrate and a chair of my local safer communities forum, and my maiden speech concentrated on policing in North-West Leicestershire.
	There is something of an anomaly in the debate tonight. We might have discovered a new phenomenon of the whole being less than the sum of the parts. We have heard many attestations to the quality of individual forces and the progress that has been made in particular areas, yet Opposition Members are quick to criticise, or set at low levels, the progress made in the police service as a whole.
	I am very happy with the progress that we have seen in Leicestershire, where during eight and a half years of Labour government the number of police officers has risen from 1,950 to 2,311. I am reasonably happy about the increases in police grant, although I accept that the proportion of police funding required from council tax payers is probably too high, and causes problems to my constituents in particular.
	An important example of progress—I have supported the Government strongly on it, although I have not always supported what they have done in the public sector—is the new role of community support officers. I   have seen them in action in my constituency and throughout Leicestershire. There are 100 or more in the county, and they are doing an excellent job. I am very pleased with the way in which the initiative has worked in practice.
	Leicestershire has a good force. Like every other Member, I have had regular contact with the local policing unit commanders, the area commanders and the chief constable, Matt Baggott, to whom I pay tribute. I pay even more tribute to the outgoing chair of the police authority, David Saville, who has done a magnificent job for eight and a half years.
	That is the good bit. I have a criticism. Why are we changing what is a reasonable and decent force? Leicestershire is well known, rightly, for being an innovative and creative force. It is accessible, open and responsive, as I said earlier in an intervention. It contains some 2,300 officers, serving a population of just under 1 million. How would we benefit from being absorbed, aggregated and expanded into a region containing nearly 4.5 million people and 10,000 officers?
	I understand the argument that a force of a minimum size is necessary to tackle major crimes, serious organised and cross-border crimes, terrorism, civil contingencies, critical incidents and problems of public order. In Leicestershire and the east Midlands, however, there has been collaboration with some of the forces with which a merger may take place at some point. There has been a successful project involving Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, which have jointly investigated drug trafficking, money laundering and the criminal use of firearms. Why, when we are seeing the benefits of exploratory piloting of such collaboration, do we want to run down this path far too fast?
	I am baffled by the requirement for a decision from the constituent police forces by 23 December. The East   Midlands strategic board, which represents collaboration by all the existing police authorities, has reluctantly concluded—that is my view, although it may not be the view of the board—that two options might work in practice, the whole-region option and the two-force option. The second option would involve Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire as one force and Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire as the other. At its meeting on Thursday, the day before the deadline, the board concluded:
	"Integral to the cost benefit analysis in respect of either option is a requirement for substantial initial and recurring expenditure that is well beyond any existing, or projected, means of the authorities."
	As was mentioned earlier, the one-off implementation cost of an east midlands regional force would be £100 million, and there would be a continuing cost in the medium term of £30 million a year. The two-force option would cost £111 million, with a medium-term revenue cost of £50 million a year. I cannot believe that that is a sensible or coherent approach for the policing of the midlands and east midlands of England. The constituent authorities must be given more time and allowed to revisit other options than forced mergers. Collaboration and federation have some attractions and some benefits.
	The authorities have been clear from the outset about the need to ensure partner and public consent to any proposed changes. A large-scale survey of people involved in the process has been undertaken. Surprise, surprise, the level of support for what is proposed and for the available options is very low indeed. Why are we going down this path? It will add nothing to the policing of the 4.5 million people of the east midlands or the 1 million people of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

Owen Paterson: I represent North Shropshire and, according to a combination of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary's baseline assessment and the police standards unit, it is the No. 1 police force in the country even though it has the fourth lowest level of funding in the country. For example, we receive £94.38 per head from the Government, while neighbouring North Wales gets £116 and Staffordshire gets £107. I am not whingeing about money. What that means is that if West Mercia received the average of its surrounding forces, it would get £130 per citizen, which would provide an equivalent of 1,600 more police officers—and, hey presto, we would hit the magic 4,000 figure and there would be no need for an argument. The Government's threat to West Mercia is completely bogus on money grounds. The force has 2,380 officers, but if it were funded at the same level as its surrounding forces, it would have 4,000 officers.
	The Home Secretary helpfully said in my local newspaper, the Shropshire Star:
	"I do listen to what people say, but I also have to listen to what the police professionals are saying to me. My No. 1 criteria is the effectiveness of policing."
	However, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home   Department, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) was absolutely roasted in the café under Westminster Hall recently when she wholly failed to answer the questions put to her by Chief Constable Paul West and the chairman, Paul Deneen. She was unable to say where the 4,000 figure came from, to identify the statistics that backed it up or to clarify whether the proposal had been peer reviewed.
	I take my hat off to Paul West. He is extremely brave. As a chief constable, he has been put in an impossible position by a request to destroy the force—a force that is his life's work. He told the Under-Secretary that speaking
	"as Chief Constable of the best performing force"
	it would not be possible for West Mercia to provide the same level of performance under a regional structure. Yet we have platitudes and bullying from the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, who has just slipped out. She merely says:
	"West Mercia as a standalone force does not meet HMIC's criteria . . . and is unlikely to deliver sufficient capacity . . . to meet the requirements for provision of protective services to national standards."
	That is utter nonsense.
	Already in West Mercia, we have a force that is going ahead towards strategic status on its own, backed by the remarkable analysis today from Professor Lawrance, statistics professor at the university of Warwick. He comprehensively rubbishes the statistical basis of the 4,000 figure. To provide a flavour of his argument, he refers to page 30 and states:
	"This is an almost perfect example of how not to present a graph"—
	the graph that illustrates the 4,000 figure. He argues that there are
	"no scales on either axis, no data plotted . . . It is almost impossible to obtain any critical understanding from it, except that it is intended to prove that score for protective capability increases with force size. I can see very little hard evidence in pages 30 and 31 to justify the 4000 figure."
	We have had an astonishing series of public meetings—more than 100—with massive support for the prospect of keeping West Mercia strategic. Support comes from all the 13 MPs in the area, all the county councils, all the district councils, 108 parish and town   councils, 14 statutory organisations, 11 police community consultative groups and 15 community groups. West Mercia has the capability to move forward. It is going ahead and intends to invest £2.5 million in 95 extra officers. The force has a record of level 2 care in respect of SAS Hereford, it handled Shrewsbury castle and Tern Hill when they were blown up by the IRA and it collaborated successfully with neighbouring forces at the Weston Park IRA summit and the G8 summit.
	I give the force full marks for all of that and I want the Minister to assure me that Paul West and Paul Deneen will be given a fair hearing when they bring these proposals forward. I can assure the Minister that they   will be considerably better prepared than the cack-handed proposals of the Government.
	These proposals are totally alien to our traditions. In Elizabethan times, jury service and policing went together and citizens were expected to perform those functions. Ten years after Peel introduced his reforms, the royal commission demanded a national force but Parliament refused because it believed that policing should be rooted in our local communities. On that basis, I bitterly oppose this rushed and unnecessary attempt to bring about the greatest change in our policing in 100 years. It is based on totally bogus statistics, there is no justification for the hurry and it rides roughshod over the No. 1 police force in the country, which, on its own, would be a successful strategic force.

Anne Snelgrove: We in Swindon do not talk about the Wiltshire police; we talk about the Swindon police. That is because we have a good, well run local force that people identify with. They certainly do not identify with Wiltshire constabulary. It is very rare to find a Swindonian who says that they are Wiltshire first and Swindon second, so discussions about Wiltshire constabulary losing its identity do not trouble my constituents. What they want is what they already have: a Swindon police force that responds to Swindon's needs, delivering the low-crime town that we already have. However, my constituents also want the reassurance that, should a threatening incident occur over and above the usual crimes that our force is good at dealing with, an organisation is in place that is able to respond immediately and with sufficient dedicated resources.
	Therein lies the rub. We are pleased with our force's performance on level 1 crimes, but level 2 crimes and major incidents are currently excluded from such measurement. It is unlikely that Wiltshire will do well in this area. With a force of some 1,000 constables, it does not have the capacity to respond to exceptional major incidents, but unfortunately there is little evidence that the police authority accepts that. It is overly concerned with the identity of Wiltshire, to the detriment of pressing national policing needs.
	As Members have said such attitudes are bound up with the possible local government review and the precarious position of the county councils. Any suggestion that county identities should go is fought tooth and nail. Sadly, Wiltshire police authority is unlikely to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State, other than to recommend the loose federation of police authorities that it proposed in its last letter to the Home Secretary. Of course, such a structure is largely the same as the existing one; if it were adequate, Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary would have said so in its report.
	A federation would be little more than a talking shop, with all the associated inherent problems. Would it have to convene a meeting to decide how to respond to a terrorist attack? If that is the plan, my constituents will not be very impressed. Federations are likely to be dominated by larger forces, and such an arrangement would be much worse than the current one for small forces such as Wiltshire. However, Wiltshire police authority has made it clear that it will sit on the fence and make the Home Secretary take the decision. That will not meet the needs of my constituents, either, and I cannot support the police authority if it decides to follow that course.
	We are not living in the time when the police boundaries were first drawn, and nor are we living in the first Elizabethan age—we are living in the second Elizabethan age. International terrorism and serious and organised crime do not respect historical boundaries. Indeed, they are likely to thrive on them, as they do not reflect current crime patterns. I do not want to have to explain to my constituents that our police force could not respond adequately to a major incident because the police authority's elected members were more concerned with protecting the identity of Wiltshire than with protecting the safety of the people living in it. I have not heard from Opposition parties any proposals that offer a serious and realistic alternative to the Government's proposals for fighting the serious and organised crime that HMIC has identified that we need to fight.
	As I have made clear, the removal of the Wiltshire constabulary is unlikely to trouble the people of Swindon. What my constituents want is good local policing, backed up by the reassurance of strategic policing for major incidents. It may be one of the smallest forces, but Wiltshire consistently outperforms most of the other constabularies in its group, thanks in part to its neighbourhood policing policy. I was pleased to note the reassurances given about that aspect of police work. Indeed, Ministers have gone to great lengths to make it clear that neighbourhood policing can co-exist quite happily within larger strategic forces. They are right to say that neighbourhood teams will be protected if dedicated teams for major incidents are created; that means that individual officers will not be taken away from their local duties. That is what we want in Swindon. Our local police commanders have made excellent contributions to neighbourhood teams in Swindon—they have led the way. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will visit us in Swindon to see what we have done with the local authority, housing, health and education, as well as the police authority.
	I commend the Home Secretary and Ministers on the rapidity of their responseto the O'Connor report—[Laughter.] Unlike Opposition Members, I do not find it amusing that we face serious policing difficulties. We do not have the luxury of delaying reform—the last restructuring took 10 years—as they suggest and I am glad that my constituents have the backing of the Government for that restructuring.

Mark Francois: I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate, partly because I have been helping to co-ordinate a campaign against the changes among MPs in Essex on a cross-party basis, as I shall explain in a moment. I also look forward to an opportunity to vote against the proposals one way or another in the new year.
	There are several reasons for opposing these ill thought-out proposals, which I shall attempt to summarise in four and a half minutes. First, they enjoy little or no public support, and certainly not in Essex. The Evening Echo, which covers most of the south of the county, ran a telephone and internet poll that showed that almost 70 per cent. of respondents want to keep Essex constabulary as a stand-alone strategic force. Only 4.1 per cent backed the Government's preferred option of a six-county regional merger.
	Secondly, the reforms would make policing more remote. Essex is one of the largest counties in England, with a population of 1.5 million people. It is also very diverse, with a highly urbanised south and a mainly rural north. It is nonsense to suggest that a regional chief constable based in Cambridge would be more in touch with how to police Essex than one based in Chelmsford in the heart of our county.
	Thirdly, there are important issues of accountability. County forces have a sense of identity to which people can relate. If we believe in policing by consent, we must do everything that we can to retain that, and these proposals do not. Fourthly, they raise the prospect of the politicisation of the police. We have a proud tradition in this country that our police are non-political, but if we have 12 regional super-forces, they would inevitably come under stronger political control from the Home Secretary. We had an inkling of that in the debate on terrorism when some chief constables, though thankfully not ours, wrote to MPs to advise us on how to cast our vote. We do not want to go any further down that route.
	Fifthly, the reforms will be expensive for little benefit. The APA has already estimated that the whole exercise could cost more than £500 million. There will be massive costs and it will also lead to an increase in council tax. The standard Essex precept is £105 for policing, compared with £145 in Norfolk. With the greatest respect to my colleagues from elsewhere in East Anglia, Essex council tax payers pay enough council tax as it is. They do not want to pay even more to subsidise policing in other parts of East Anglia.
	Sixthly, the merger is not necessary to combat terrorism, as I pointed out in an earlier intervention, when I quoted my own chief constable in Essex. Seventhly, with all the house building that is likely to take place in Essex, much as I resent it, our policing strength on a pro rata basis will rise well above the   4,000 limit in a few years and thus comply with the Government's arbitrary target.
	Crucially, the proposals are now opposed on an all-party basis in the county. Essex police authority, which is chaired by Councillor Robert Chambers and is all-party, has now formally come out in favour of the stand-alone option. At a meeting in Chelmsford last Friday, its members voted overwhelmingly for the option that Essex should stand alone as a strategic force, and the authority will submit that opinion to the Home Office to comply with the 23 December deadline. In addition, the chief constable of Essex, Roger Baker, who had previously had some sympathy with the suggestion of a regional merger—as the Minister will know—has now backed the Essex stand-alone option on behalf of the force and the people it protects.
	There is all-party opposition among Essex Members of Parliament. Last week, 15 of the 17 MPs in Essex signed a pledge in defence of Essex constabulary and expressed their formal support for option 4—that Essex should stand alone. They included the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell)—who is in his place—a Liberal Democrat, and the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), a Labour Member, as well as all the Conservative MPs in the county. Therefore, I may claim genuine cross-party support on the issue. Feelings are running high on both sides of the House tonight, but as far as I know, we are the only county for which MPs from all parties have come together and formally signed a pledge in defence of maintaining our force. The Minister ignores that at her peril. Shortly, I shall write to her and the Home Secretary with a copy of that pledge so that she can see the strength of feeling for herself.
	I have been an MP for only about four years, and this is one of the liveliest debates in which I have participated—certainly in terms of the opening speeches. Again and again, Members on both sides of the House have spoken out against the proposals. In policemen and women, we are talking about a breed of people who do a special job. In essence, they defend us and our constituents. Tonight, MPs of all parties in the House have united to defend them.
	If policing by consent still means anything to the Government, Ministers should listen to elected representatives on both sides of the House who have been sent here to speak on behalf of their police and their constituency. I say to Ministers: think again and make the changes go away.

Adrian Bailey: I welcome the report and follow my colleague, my   hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden), who is unfortunately no longer in the Chamber, in saying that my force, the West Midlands force, welcomes the proposals. It has taken action and made proposals within the time scale.
	I spoke not only to the force management but to Paul   Tonks, the secretary of the West Midlands police federation. He commented that he was surprised that the reforms had not happened before; the federation was in favour. If both management and practitioners at local level are in favour of the reforms, there must be something going for them.
	Public opinion has been prayed in aid for many solutions to the gaps identified in our policing. As with all public consultation, however, it really depends on the question that is asked. If we asked the public whether it was acceptable for only 13 of our 43 police forces to have specialist murder squads, they would say no. If we asked whether it was acceptable that only 6 per cent. of big criminal gangs are targeted every year, they would say no. Is it acceptable that only seven of the 43 forces deploy special branch officers in support of local neighbourhood teams? The public would find that shocking, too. In addition, I have evidence from local people who complain that their local police are diverted to other police forces when a major incident takes place elsewhere, and are thus unable to carry out their neighbourhood policing duties.
	There are huge gaps in our level 2 policing that must be addressed but, unfortunately, I have heard no coherent argument from Opposition Members about how that should be done. I have heard the Kent solution and the Hampshire solution. I have heard about a bit of federation here and a bit of collaboration there, but all those solutions were examined in the O'Connor report and rejected as not fit for the purpose we want—for our police forces to be able to deal adequately with level 2 crime.
	I accept that the consultation period was short. Having been in local government for many years, I   know that public authorities will take as long as they are given for consultation. Indeed, as has been said, the last police reform started in 1960 and finished in 1974. We no longer have that sort of time. We live in an age where technology and its criminal use move at such a pace that delay assists only the criminal. Given the figures outlined in the O'Connor report, the public will be on our side and will say that the Government need to address the issues urgently.
	I want to emphasise an issue raised by other Members, but it is essential to keep hammering home the point: at the end of the day, the public will judge their local police on how they respond to antisocial and neighbourhood problems. An improvement in level 2 policing will have a constructive impact on the number of police available and perhaps result in the diminution of crime and antisocial behaviour at a local level. However, it is incumbent on the Government to ensure that as they make the changes and give level 2 policing a measurement of performance management, they do not take their eye off the ball on local policing. Level 2 policing must not be carried out to the detriment of local policing.

Edward Garnier: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Adrian Bailey: I do not have time.
	I emphasise the fact that we must control costs, because we will be judged on local impact and the size of the bills that drop through people's letter boxes.

Bob Russell: I shall be brief because of the time.
	The hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) mentioned the support throughout Essex for the retention of Essex as a stand-alone police force. The force is already on top of its case and has 3,200 police officers. When the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety winds up the debate, will she set out the number of officers between 3,200 and 4,000 that would be sufficient for the force to stand alone? The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) made an excellent case for why Kent police should stand alone, and I suggest that it was identical to the argument why Essex police should stand alone.
	Who is exerting pressure by saying that the people of   Essex would be better served by a force that was   amalgamated with Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, because all the evidence shows that the Essex force operates perfectly well on its own? Will the Minister comment on the Prime Minister's verbal response to the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) that he would ensure that the Government would examine the case for Essex to stand alone if evidence to support that were produced? Will she assure the House that what the Prime Minister said was the truth and that the Government will listen and act if such a case can be made?

Laura Moffatt: I have only a couple of minutes, but I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I know that most of us have looked carefully at the plans, but I have become more and more suspicious that those who oppose them are doing so for many other reasons than their desire to make our police force more effective. I became incredibly suspicious when I had a dialogue with the Sussex police authority, and fast realised that because I   did not take its point of view it did not want to be bothered to hear from me. I firmly believe that we need to address the question of our borders and to tackle the crime with which most people now—thank goodness—have no contact. People are worried about crime in their communities.
	I have one question for the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, although I firmly believe that I know the answer to it—[Laughter.] I am glad that Opposition Members find that funny, because we in Crawley do not. We think that policing is incredibly important. When I had my regular meeting this morning with my divisional commander, did we talk about force structure or the strange debates that are going on? No, we did not; we talked about how policing is better for people in my community, how we can tackle young people who hang about on parades, how the local strategic partnership can tackle problems and how our increased number of community support officers can do the job that they want to do. That is what matters. People do not say that they want Sussex police to turn up. They want a police officer in their neighbourhood and that is precisely what they will get. They get that now and I am glad to say that they will get it with a changed structure. I want to ensure that we move ahead and have the police authorities that we deserve.

Nick Herbert: I regret the contribution just made by the hon. Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt), who is completely out of step with the views of other West Sussex Members of Parliament, her own chief constable and the police authority, all of whom have expressed grave concern about the impact of amalgamation on policing in the county.
	It will not have been lost on the Government that of, by my count, 26 speakers, only five Government Members were willing to defend the Government's proposals, and many of them offered only a qualified defence. Great concern has been expressed about the proposals. The right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), who is Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, voiced concern about the inability of any proposed amalgamation to cross borders.

Peter Bone: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Nick Herbert: I have very little time, so if my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not give way.
	We face an absurd situation in which Dorset would be unable to amalgamate with Hampshire, even if it wanted to. Many hon. Members representing Welsh constituencies, including the hon. Members for Clwyd, South (Mr. Jones), for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd), made the same points in relation to the inability of North Wales police to merge with the Cheshire force, as did the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), who bravely suggested that Derbyshire might make a foray into Staffordshire.
	The Opposition fear that in proposing the amalgamations, the Government are pursuing the regional agenda that we have seen in planning, health care and fire services. There is a simple remedy for our fears: if the Minister is not pursuing that agenda, she need only agree to a straightforward request to allow mergers across borders. If she will not agree to that, we shall have a clearer idea of what the proposals are about.
	Conservative Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), spoke about the British Transport police, whose position in London is a special one. My hon. Friend's concerns were echoed by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). Having met the British Transport police authority, I believe that there are compelling reasons why the BTP should remain a separate, independent organisation. For example, the London underground extends beyond Metropolitan police force boundaries, the British Transport police pursue mainly level 1 policing functions, and soccer trains are run across county borders.
	The Conservatives accept that some policing functions are best performed at national level. We would not go so far as to take up the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) to extend the powers of SOCA, but we are grateful to him for taking up our proposal for a border police force. I hope that his brave adoption of a Conservative policy will not harm his bid for the leadership of his party. We strongly reject the concept of a national police force and we are delighted that the Home Secretary has ruled that out, but we remain concerned that the creation of regional forces will be a step towards greater centralisation, which could lead inexorably to the creation of a national force.
	Several hon. Members questioned the central premise of the report, which is that a force requires at least 4,000 officers to deal with level 2 crime. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) pointed out that John Giffard, the chief constable who is charged with driving the Government's proposal, told Kent police authority that that threshold simply did not matter. The O'Connor report itself makes the point that
	"some smaller forces were almost as successful as the majority of larger forces, whilst two relatively large forces"—
	with 5,000 or more staff—
	"received surprisingly low scores."
	As my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) said, the weakness of the arbitrary figure of 4,000 staff can be seen if one reads the O'Connor report. There is a central graph designed to show that bigger forces are more successful in maintaining protective services—but there are no scales on it. What does that tell us about the integrity of the research? Each force on the graph is represented by an unnamed dot. We do not know how each force performed because that information is not available to us in the report. Perhaps the Minister will agree to report it. We do not believe that a case for amalgamation can be hung upon such tenuous evidence, particularly when the consequences would be so profound.
	My hon. Friends the Members for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) and for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) referred to unequal precepts. Sussex police authority has said that if it were forced to merge with Surrey that would increase the police element of the council tax in Sussex by 20 per cent. West Mercia police authority has said that the regional West Midlands force, taking in Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands and West Mercia, would lead to council tax falling in Staffordshire, West Mercia and Warwickshire but that in the west midlands it would rise and £30 would be added to the average council tax bill. That would lead to great local resentment at a time when levels of council tax are rising unacceptably. Perhaps the Minister will tell us how she would deal with the problem of equalisation of precepts.
	The Government's case for merging police forces rests on achieving savings that can be ploughed back into enhancing protective services. The Minister, in her interview in The Daily Telegraph this morning, said:
	"The whole aim here, by having larger forces, is to give us some re-organisation of the business so that we can reinvest in these Level Two services".
	The report said that the savings could be £70 million a year.
	How did the report arrive at that figure? It seems to have assumed savings of 1 or 2 per cent. of spending. We do not know what those savings are. How can savings on this scale be properly estimated if the structure of the service and the number of amalgamations is not known? There are no supporting calculations to back up the estimate. The figure appears to have been written on the back of an envelope. Even if £70 million is right, that is just 0.6 per cent. of the total budget of policing, which is £11 billion a year.
	The Government's case is even less convincing since they have no idea of what amalgamations would cost. The report admitted that there would be costs but did not quantify them. The Home Secretary's first letter to chief constables did not mention the costs of amalgamations. His second letter recommended borrowing to meet the costs of merger. It took a third letter, two working days before the debate, for the right hon. Gentleman to recognise that the cost would be significant. He had decided to set aside up to £125 million of capital funding to support authorities and forces committing to an early merger.
	We all know why he had to do that. Costly climb-downs appear to be in fashion on the Government Benches today. Where is the money coming from? It does not appear to be new money. The Home Secretary has raided the budget for police capital spending. The sum of £125 million would have been invested in police services and could have been invested in enhancing protective services. That money will now be spent, wholly unnecessarily, on amalgamating forces.
	We are concerned also about accountability. The Government have not thought seriously about the issue. The O'Connor report points out that the number of basic command units upon which the Government have been relying for suggesting that there will still be elements of local policing has already fallen from 320 to 230 in just three years. The existing size of police authorities is 17 members. I understand that the Government have said that they are willing to increase that size to 23. If a police force area and the population that it serves doubles or trebles, by definition each member of the public has less representation unless the authority is increased in size by the same proportion.
	As Sir Ian Blair said in his Dimbleby lecture last month,
	"Every lesson of every police inquiry, not only the issues that give rise to antisocial behaviour but also those that give rise to criminal activity and to terrorism begin at the most local level, and it is the threat to that local policing that most concerns us about these proposals."
	I wonder whether the Minister will tell us why she has not been keen to pursue the idea of federations, which was supported strongly by hon. Members on both sides of the House. My hon. Friends the Members for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) and for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) and the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) all said that it would be possible for police forces to share functions, and that that may be a much lower-cost option as a way of strengthening strategic services in future.
	Finally, it is the speed at which the debate has been pursued that has most discredited the Government. Hon. Members on both sides of the House complained about that. The manner in which the Government have driven the debate is worrying—there has not been any time for debate, and there has not been a vote. On 5 April—the eve of the election campaign—the Government commissioned the O'Connor report. The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety said in a letter to Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the chief inspector:
	"The next stage of the review should be low-key in terms of publicity".
	I wonder why she issued such advice just before the election campaign.
	The Government have simply failed to make the case for amalgamation. In 1994, in a debate on the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill, it was said that
	"a wholesale amalgamation of the smaller police services . . . will remove local policing further from local people when there is no evidence that it will create a more effective police service."—[Official Report, 5 July 1994; Vol. 246, c. 273.]
	That was said by the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), who was then shadow Home Secretary. He was right then, and he is right now.

Hazel Blears: May I welcome the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) to his Front-Bench role? I am sure that he will enjoy it and the opportunity to work with the police.
	I shall try to respond to as many contributions as possible. Twenty-seven Members spoke, which shows the level of interest on both sides of the House in the future of our police services and their importance to local people. I was a little disappointed that Opposition speeches did not include a single contribution by a female Member of Parliament. Indeed, I do not think that a female Opposition Member even attended the debate, which is not the face of the new Conservative party that we want to see. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) made a disappointing contribution, in which he argued for the "do nothing" option. He often says that he wants efficiency, but he was not prepared to make any of the bold and courageous decisions that the Government are prepared to make. May I remind him of the history of the proposals? The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) is in the Chamber and, in June 1993, just before he replaced the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) as Home Secretary, a White Paper on police reform was published. It said that "the pattern" of 43 forces
	"is partly the result of historical accident and the merging of organisations established haphazardly over more than 100 years . . . The result today is a patchwork quilt of forces of widely varying sizes and types. . . It is questionable whether 43 separate organisations are now needed to run police operations and whether the maintenance of 43 parallel organisations makes the most effective use of the resources available to policing."
	Twenty-three years ago, the Conservative Government were not prepared to grasp the nettle and make the decisions that needed to be made. History has therefore repeated itself.
	The hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), like other hon. Members, commended the ability of our police forces to respond. He acknowledged that changes were taking place, and that there were new challenges in relation to serious and organised crime. However, there is not a blueprint, redprint or any other kind of print in the Home Office to redraw the map, which is why we asked forces and authorities to submit proposals. I can tell the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members that, as a result of those proposals, the links of the locality will be stronger, not weaker—a point that has been made by several Government Members.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Hazel Blears: I am afraid that I will not give way, as I have seven minutes to try to deal with 27 contributions, and I will do my best to do so.
	I was grateful for the support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), who asked us not to be too rigid on coterminosity and Government office boundaries. We included that issue in the original criteria for logical and coherent reasons, because prevention of crime, young people, social services, education and drug action teams are significant considerations, and it is important to align such services with policing services. Only 50 per cent. of work to tackle crime is pure policing business—the rest of that work is conducted in conjunction with a range of organisations. Where there is a compelling case for going against those criteria, we would look at that, but it is the responsibility of Government to set criteria in the first place.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) had some understandable concerns. We have met Welsh Members on four or five different occasions and I am happy to continue having those discussions. North Wales has a good record on neighbourhood policing. I have visited the force and seen it for myself, and it is one of the excellent forces. Again, it will be important for North Wales police to continue to collaborate with the Cheshire force, whatever the future of the strategic force, because that is an important relationship to maintain, as various hon. Members have said.
	The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) asked whether the 4,000 figure for the size of strategic forces was a completely hard-and-fast rule. Denis O'Connor rightly said in his report that there was a clear correlation in respect of the size of force; but, again, we have said if Kent police want to work up the stand-alone option—they are doing so—and if it provides protective services in a proper way, we will consider it.

Bob Russell: Essex.

Hazel Blears: The hon. Gentleman is shouting "Essex" at me. If he calms down, I will come to him in a moment.
	Again, if Essex police want to work up that option, we will consider it, but all hon. Members should realise that this is not simply about looking at individual solutions. As any Government would, we must also consider the national landscape and what works in each region—that is a careful balance to make—so we will look at the options, but we will not make the wrong decisions simply because they are based on individual forces. We will consider how the forces interact and at how the whole business is configured.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, South (Mr. Jones) made some important points about his police area, and I can reassure him about strength and accountability at BCU level.
	The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), with his extensive experience of the British Transport police, made some important points, and he knows that the Department for Transport is conducting a review that, we hope, will feed into some of our considerations.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden), who has had to leave, put the emphasis in a very lucid contribution rightly on tackling antisocial behaviour and local crime. Again, I can reassure him about strengthened accountability arrangements at BCU level. We are committed to looking at the idea of local police boards, whereby local communities will be able to set priorities and have a much greater input than they currently have.
	The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) has extensive knowledge from his experience of being Opposition police spokesperson, but he must also know about the links between the local communities and the volume of crime at BCU level, and then between the strategic level and serious and organised crime. They are absolutely connected, and I would not want the role of tackling all serious and organised crime to be taken over by SOCA, thus losing those essential links with community intelligence.
	Several hon. Members have spoken about collaboration and federation. I am not convinced that collaboration would take us anywhere on the journey that we need to take. There have been several examples of forces that have tried to collaborate, but other forces have not provided resources and there has been no real buy-in and no real ownership. That would not get us results.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar) made some very powerful points, and I acknowledge his support for local policing over very many years. If police authorities do not submit cases by 23 December, we will continue to work with them throughout January and continue to offer support, but if, at the end of the day, we have to make decisions, we will clearly need to do so.
	My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) made some important points, again, about collaboration. I have discussed the matter with him, and I am not convinced that it is necessarily the way forward. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) wants no change, but I am afraid that, with the serious threats that face us, that is not an option either.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) is absolutely right about the importance of good neighbourhood policing, and I acknowledge, again, his concerns about the relationship with Cheshire police. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt), in an excellent speech, talked about the good collaboration that Derbyshire police have. They are a very good force, as well, in dealing with domestic violence and sexual offences, and I hope that they can spread that good practice among other forces.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) also argued for no change. Again, we must look at the position across the country. He understands the arguments and the serious threat that faces us.
	The hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) has his report on statistics. We also have a report that expands the HMIC report, and I hope that he will look at it.
	My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) made an excellent speech in support of the idea of creating strategic forces. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey) also made an excellent speech, with an analysis of the gaps in our capacity. Again, my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) showed a real grasp of the new threats that face police authorities in this country.
	We have seen a fairly unholy alliance among the Opposition parties. I wonder whether we have seen the new Liberal Conservatives, or the Conservative Liberals, united on a no-change option. Perhaps we are seeing a new merger not of police forces but of—
	It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
	That, at the sitting on Thursday 12th January—
	(1) the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motions in the name of Mr Secretary Darling relating to the Crossrail Bill not later than two hours after the commencement of proceedings on the first Motion; such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; proceedings may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not
	apply; and
	(2) proceedings on the Motion for the Adjournment in the name of the Prime Minister relating to Security of Energy Supply may continue, though opposed, for three hours or until Six o'clock, whichever is the later, and shall then lapse if not previously disposed of.—[Mr. Watts.]

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Ordered,
	That Mr Andrew Mackay be discharged from the Foreign Affairs Committee and Mr David Heathcoat-Amory be added.—[Joan Ryan, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

ARMED FORCES BILL

Ordered,
	That Vera Baird, Mr Simon Burns, Mr David Burrowes, Mr Alan Campbell, Ben Chapman, Mr George Howarth, Mr Gerald Howarth, Mr Kevan Jones, Robert Key, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, Mr Michael Moore, Bob Russell, Jim Sheridan and Mr Don Touhig be members of the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill.—[Joan Ryan, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

PETITIONS
	 — 
	Broseley Leisure Centre

Philip Dunne: I present a petition on behalf of the users of Broseley leisure centre, which
	Declares that there is a social requirement for a multi-purpose leisure facility in Broseley in order to meet the needs of the local community.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons make Broseley Town Council and Bridgnorth District Council aware of the petitioners' concerns.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

May Avenue (Castle Point)

Bob Spink: Like many communities in south Essex, Castle Point faces a new plague. We are becoming flat-land, with good houses demolished to make way for massive blocks of flats that harm neighbours, do nothing for the street scene and place our already over-burdened infrastructure under even greater pressures. The drive of the Office of the Deputy Prime for more building and yet higher densities is causing that, and it is damaging our communities. It must stop.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of residents affected by the plan to build an additional twelve flats in May Avenue, Castle Point,
	Declares that the plan to build twelve flats in May Avenue will be detrimental to the Petitioners as local residents and also to the wider community of Castle Point, which is already overdeveloped for the infrastructure that exists.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons call upon the Government to do all within its power to ensure that Castle Point Borough councillors reject the application.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

Essex Police Force

Bob Spink: I am privileged to present a separate petition that, like my early-day motion 1010, seeks to resist the Government's drive to replace our local police force with a merged, more remote body that, if the excellent survey by the Evening Echo is anything to go by, is very much against the wishes of the people of Essex.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of residents of Essex,
	Declares that they wish to support option four of a stand alone strategic police force for Essex and they object to Government plans to merge police forces which would lead to unacceptable centralisation with the possibility of political control and higher costs, and with less local control and accountability of the police; and they welcome the cross-Party actions of Essex MPs to save Essex Police Force.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons call upon the Government to withdraw its dangerous and politically motivated policy of merging police forces and retain Essex Police Force in its current format.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

Thundersley (Toilet Facilities)

Bob Spink: My third petition is again quite separate. I present it on behalf of the people in Thundersley in Castle Point, who wish the provision of a decent set of public toilets in Thundersley village to be maintained. One of the measures of a decent borough council is that it maintains good facilities, particularly for the elderly.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of the residents of Thundersley area and others,
	Declares that Castle Point Borough Council is not providing toilet facilities in Thundersley Village. These facilities are very much needed and can be easily made safe for all users by proper design and management. The petition further declares that other councils provide decent toilet facilities and that the level of council tax in Castle Point is extremely high.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons call upon the Government to do all within its power to ensure that Castle Point Borough councillors provide the toilet facilities we need.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

Gloucestershire Constabulary

Mark Harper: This is a petition from the residents of Gloucestershire, supported by my hon. Friends the Members for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) and for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) and the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood). It has been signed by 1,037 residents of Gloucestershire and the shadow Home Secretary.
	The petition states:
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons note the commendations bestowed upon the Gloucestershire Constabulary; the excellent quality of service that is provided by the Constabulary and the Constabulary's excellent capability to address criminality in Gloucestershire. The Petitioners further request that the House of Commons urge the Home Office to maintain the Constabulary as an independent force and give support to the Constabulary to continue its independent programme of development for the people of Gloucestershire.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

INTERNET (ROGUE DIALLING)

Motion made and question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Kevin Brennan.]

Bob Blizzard: After a lengthy and, dare I say it, extended debate about police force boundaries, I want to focus on the victims of a particular crime—we always say that we want to put victims first. I am grateful for the opportunity to bring to the attention of the House the appalling situation that 19 households in my constituency have experienced as victims of what has become known as internet rogue dialling. I also want to discuss the dismal treatment that those constituents have received as BT customers and highlight the regulatory mess, from which we are now emerging with the help of the Minister for Industry and the Regions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael), but which still leaves my constituents and thousands more all over the country as out-of-pocket victims who feel that they have been living a nightmare.
	Although there have been various problems associated with premium rate service abuse, I am discussing one specific type of scam—for "scam", read "crime". It did not involve the victims making any judgments or misjudgments while using the internet, and it did not involve misleading online advertisements or offers that might have lured people into such a predicament. All my constituents did was open their telephone bill and find charges, usually for hundreds of pounds, for calls that they never made. The largest charge was for more than £800, and those people can prove that they never made those calls.
	Ofcom accepts that that is what happened, and it has provided me with a briefing for this debate:
	"There exists a type of 'rogue' dialler using premium rate ('09') international and satellite numbering that proved to be a serious virus type problem during 2004 and resulted in substantial levels of consumer harm. This resulted in ICSTIS receiving an unprecedented volume of complaints and enquiries from consumers about this activity. The majority of those cases involved websites simply installing diallers without permission and with stealth, resulting in consumers receiving high bills and subsequently disputing them on the grounds that they had no knowledge these calls were being made."
	The rogue calls were usually to an obscure, faraway place, in the case of most of my constituents, the island of Tuvalu, which I confess that I had never heard of until I took up this matter, and a wave of complaints was made to BT, the police and the regulators. The matter was highlighted in East Anglia by BBC "Look East", but other victims have subsequently contacted me from all over the country.
	BT has also provided me with a brief, which states:
	"at one time some 2,000 cases were being reported daily to ICSTIS; ICSTIS were taking up to 26 weeks to conclude investigations; ICSTIS often did not know who ran the services in order for customers to approach them to their money back as records were not up to date, and some unscrupulous terminating comms providers dragged their feet in complying with requests to update ICSTIS; ICSTIS had no real 'teeth' to make them comply".
	It is clear that BT tended to blame the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services.
	The real problem was that whoever people complained to, BT said, in effect, "It's not me, guv—it's not my fault." One of my constituents, Mr. Gasson, received a bill for more than £600-worth of calls that he never made. He spoke to BT and then contacted the police, who referred him back to BT. Since then, he has been pursued for payment and there have been heaps of correspondence between him, myself and BT. Today, he has been cut off for not paying for something that he never bought.

Peter Bone: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. The case that he describes is extraordinary. Had it been a credit card, the credit card company would have to refund the money. Why is BT not refunding it?

Bob Blizzard: The hon. Gentleman has taken the words right out of my mouth. The key principle of this case, which applies to all commercial transactions, is that one should not have to pay for what one has never bought. There is indeed a comparison with fraudulent items on credit card bills.
	Why should my constituent, Mr. Gasson, and others have to pay BT money that we now know was fraudulently generated? BT, and no other organisation, is the organisation with which he has the commercial relationship as a customer.
	I accept that BT is a victim too. It did not wish this to happen and it did not intend to defraud people. However, BT is a giant company that has an overview and understands what has happened. It is much better placed than individual customers to pursue matters along the chain of comms companies involved in the process and to recover the costs in that way. BT is very keen to absolve itself of any blame. It sent me a briefing document that said:
	"although the cost of these calls appears on telephone bills, originating communications providers (such as BT) have absolutely no control over the calls in question (although we are obliged to carry them) and receive only a tiny proportion of the revenues involved".
	BT has maintained throughout that it will have already paid the money up the chain of operators, arriving eventually at the fraudster, before it becomes aware of the customer's problem, and so then has to recover the money from the customer.
	But BT is in business and should know about business risk. It signed up to a system whereby it pays out before it gets paid by customers. If a hit has to be taken, BT, as a business, should take it. It is unfair that the customer is being punished. France Telecom has not punished its customers; it has waived charges for proven fraudulent internet rogue dialler calls. It is disappointing that BT does not have the same sense of duty to its customers. Instead, demands have been issued, lines have been blocked for outgoing calls, and many of my constituents have been disconnected. Even a local charity helpline was cut off for non-payment. It was reconnected after my intervention, but the dispute has still not been settled.
	BT has made some ex gratia payments, ranging from almost nothing to £250. I have told BT that its system is inconsistent. It has not demonstrated to me that it has any underlying rationale. The only consistency lies in its unwillingness to waive the offending charges. Ex gratia payments are left to the discretion of individual advisers; that has been admitted to me in letters. This leads me to believe that BT's response is driven more by concern about how its reputation might be perceived than by real concern for its customers.
	The heart of the matter is that it is wrong to pursue innocent individuals for charges that we now know were fraudulently generated. To be fair, BT has acted to improve the situation for subsequent and future customers by issuing free premium rate service barring, free software downloads and a more rapid warning system to alert customers whom they suspect are being defrauded.

Philip Hollobone: I too congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Is there not an interesting contrast between the water companies, which are not allowed to cut off customers who have confusion over their bills, and BT, which is the dominant player in the telecoms market?

Bob Blizzard: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment.
	BT is also now filing transaction reports with the National Criminal Intelligence Service and withholding payment in cases where it has suspicion.
	The Department for Trade and Industry and Ofcom have also acted to tighten up the system. They have encouraged ICSTIS to institute a prior permissions regime for dialler software utilising premium rate numbers, they have introduced the requirement that no money should be paid out to service providers for at least 30 days, and they have increased the fines for offenders. Those actions, when they are all in place, will result in a better system, but the fact that they have had to introduce those measures demonstrates the failings of what was going on last year. However, the new measures do not address the situation of those people who have already become victims of internet rogue dialling, on which I am concentrating tonight.
	Because I feel that BT took fraudulently generated money from customers and passed it on through other companies in the communications chain to the very people who perpetrated the fraud, I asked Suffolk police to investigate whether BT was in breach of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and that matter is being pursued by Suffolk police and the Suffolk Crown Prosecution Service. BT knew at that time that the money was dodgy because it was paying its share to a charity. It denies guilt today, and I am not trying to take on BT on that count. It says that it was doing only what it was contractually obliged to do.
	But the great feature of the whole matter is that no one will accept blame, fault or responsibility. BT said to me that it
	"has a regulatory obligation as a carrier to interconnect with any comms provider in the interests of competition, with extremely limited ability to withhold funds if there is a suspicion of wrong doing"—
	except that that is what it is now doing, according to the Crown Prosecution Service.
	ICSTS seems to blame the companies. It said:
	"We did, however, introduce an enhanced registration requirement in June 2004 for service providers operating dialler services. No service provider registered international satellite numbers with ICSTIS and no permission certificate has ever been issued for a dialler licence using an international number."
	It concluded therefore that
	"any dialler services operating on international numbers is doing so wilfully in an attempt to hide wrongdoing."
	On that basis ICSTIS told all leading phone companies back in June 2004 that any international or satellite number found linked to a dialler service should be cut off immediately, and it repeated that message in the second half of 2004. But my constituents were still being defrauded. ICSTIS says:
	"The issue of BT's effectiveness or otherwise in spotting international dialler traffic and acting to cut access and withhold outpayment is something for BT to address."
	So ICSTIS was tending to pass the matter to the companies. The question is: does ICSTIS and its code have enough teeth?
	BT tends to blame Ofcom. It said:
	"Ofcom should stop handing out premium rate numbers to companies who have no real business model . . . Service providers could also be required to pay an up-front bond—available to compensate customers if the company defrauded them and disappeared."
	Where are we now? Everybody has been playing the blame game, when in fact everybody should be trying to help the victims, not just by preventing future victims, but by addressing the problems of those who are already victims.
	First, these matters must be pursued through the criminal justice system. The Suffolk investigation is proceeding very slowly. Will my right hon. Friend therefore write to the Crown Prosecution Service in Suffolk in order to be kept informed and to show some interest in the matter? Of course, that might not produce a result. Secondly, BT should take a leaf out of France Telecom's book and stop pursuing the proceeds of fraud. Of course, BT is not the only company involved. Thirdly, therefore, the Government have a duty to ensure effective and fair regulation, which was not in place in 2004. That was made clear in letters dated 21 March from the chief executive of Ofcom, Stephen Carter, which all Members of the House received.
	I believe that the Government have a moral duty to protect people as consumers and as victims of crime. The Office of the Telecommunications Ombudsman only considers whether the processes were followed, but the process itself was flawed. That does not get to the heart of the problem. The Government and the industry, principally BT, should act together to establish a compensation scheme.
	My right hon. Friend has nobly acted to improve the future. I believe, however, that we need action to redress the past. Crimes have been perpetrated, innocent victims deserve better from BT, and I think that they deserve a little bit more from the Government.

Alun Michael: My hon. Friend raised some important issues in the debate, which, as he was kind enough to acknowledge, I have been addressing, as has the regulator, Ofcom—which, of course, is accountable to the House rather than to Ministers—ICSTIS and others involved, as well as the companies. I felt that this was such an important issue on which to provide enlightenment that I wrote to all Members of the House on 7 November on several of the telecoms issues that were raising concerns, to explain the actions that were being taken by all involved.
	Some of the issues raised by my hon. Friend are for commercial organisations to deal with, whereas others are issues that we have already addressed, either directly or through the regulatory bodies, as he was kind enough to acknowledge at the start of his remarks. He was offered an opportunity to clarify his specific concerns, which he has every right not to do, but it is important in responding to the debate to set the proper context.
	Let us be clear: when such an event occurs, the blame lies on the author of the scam or crime. Measures that have been put in place, such as withholding money for 30 days to allow recompense or fines to bite, are an important means of protection for the future and of making sure that those who contemplate such activity cannot get away with it.
	As my hon. Friend acknowledged, service providers have also been victims. Generosity in dealing with victims is desirable when the service provider is a large company, as he indicated, but it is not enforceable—we cannot require that of a company that is itself a victim, when the problem has arisen because of the ability to use computer equipment that is no part of the provision of BT or any other service provider. We must be even-handed.
	Our duty is to make sure that there is effective and fair regulation, and I am pleased by the steps taken to address that. ICSTIS is consulting on changing the way in which its code deals with refunds. Early next year, it should be possible to get refunds from those telecoms companies that terminate premium rate services, which is an important part of the issue.
	I would be the first to acknowledge that this is a complicated area of commercial activity in which the fast-changing nature of information and communication technologies, and the pace of convergence between technologies, offer a number of challenges. It should also be acknowledged, however, that it is a success story, in terms of both the services now available and the way in which industry is co-operating with Government to deal with the cowboys. In the case of a number of scams, we have effectively created an antisocial behaviour order for the bad guys without tying the good guys up in red tape. To those who think that internet activity and premium-rate services are wholly bad, I say, "Look at the facts and study the reality." Just banning it all, as a colleague said to me last week, would be so disproportionate as to give the Luddites a good name. I know that that is not what my hon. Friend has asked for.

Bob Blizzard: All that I asked for was some justice for the people who had already been victims. I fully acknowledge the tremendous work that my right hon. Friend has done to try to set the system straight, but if we cannot catch the fraudsters and hold them responsible, what is to be done for the victims of the fraud, who only had a contract with BT or some other provider? Can the Government not do something for those victims?

Alun Michael: As I said at the beginning, if my hon. Friend had raised that issue with some clarity I could have said more.
	In the cases that my hon. Friend mentioned, BT is the provider of a line. The equipment that is placed on the line and its vulnerability to being used are matters of individual responsibility. They are not the responsibility of BT, which provided the computer whose technology and software were not protected against the possibility of a scam.
	As I said, this is a complex area. During 2003 initially but primarily during 2004, there was an explosion of activity involving a scam that had not been anticipated. Many people recognise the need for proper protection for their software and equipment, but do not realise until something goes seriously wrong how important that is, and that it is their responsibility and not that of the provider.
	If there is a problem on the road, that has nothing to do with the car that is driven over it. Responsibility for the vehicle and its safety is governed by legislation. It must have passed its MOT, and it must be safe. That is entirely different from the provision of the highway. I think that my hon. Friend has confused and conflated a number of issues.
	BT discovered within a day that there was a problem from an analysis of charges that were building up, and notified the person whose equipment was allowing that to happen. It was therefore possible to close it down, and indeed to close the access to overseas numbers. There are numerous such examples.
	People have been able to perpetrate a scam and disappear with the money. When that happens, there is no one left to blame, although there are victims. The service provider is a victim, the individuals are victims, but there is no one to blame. We have created a system that will hold money for up to 30 days. I was examining a case with officials and experts today. The fact that the equipment was allowing the criminal—the scammer—to programme it to make the calls was identified within 24 hours. Within 48 hours, the number had been blocked, so the scam could no longer continue. The 30-day delay means that money can be retained within the system and there is a possibility of recompense or, if the equipment has not been properly put in place, of fining. I had hoped to explain some of the wider context: there may not be enough time left, but I shall attempt to do so for my hon. Friend.
	We are talking about an industry that is rapidly developing. It provides a variety of services that are used on a daily basis. It is an immensely powerful tool, but my hon. Friend will know that every time one connects to the internet, a warning appears asking whether the user really wants to proceed. The point is to illustrate for users that, along with the power of the system, there are also vulnerabilities.
	What has happened as a result of identifying the problems? Rather than coming in quickly with heavy legislation, we have come in quickly to provide the industry with means of enabling future scams to be prevented and to create an increasingly sophisticated system of scam prevention, which allows us to take the value out—

Bob Blizzard: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on all that he has done to rectify the system, but the fact remains that the people who were ripped off in 2004 operated the internet in the customary way. They were akin to people who do not have burglar alarms. If we want to stop burglars, there are burglar alarms, but many people do not own them and we do not say to victims of burglary who do not possess one, "Tough, you didn't have an alarm". Will he now address the situation of the victims, rather than the future?

Alun Michael: My hon. Friend misses the point again. We certainly do not blame people who do not possess burglar alarms for the fact that their house has been burgled. We blame the burglar and the criminal. We do not ask the police to recompense residents who have been burgled. One hopes that they will have insurance. If not, we do not then say, "Let the police or someone else recompense them".
	I believe that it was right that a variety of providers, including BT, which my hon. Friend specifically mentioned by name, wrote off considerable sums of money that would have gone straight on to the scammer under the previous system. In that context, BT or any other provider such as NTL would have lost money as a result of the scam. The blame falls on the scam. We should do what we have been doing—create conditions that take the value out of a scam so that the scammers cannot take the money and scarper after a short while. They cannot then reappear and repeat the activity. It is important to understand the steps that we have put in place to ensure that that happens.
	As regards specific bills, I suggest that my hon. Friend speak to the service provider that dealt with the cases in his constituency. It is not for the Government to say, "You"—whether referring to BT, NTL or whatever—"have been a victim of a scam and you should recompense the customer for everything that they repaid." Such a generous response to the fact that individuals have been placed in a position of loss by large industrial organisations may well be a virtue, but it is not appropriate for the Government to require it. That is what I said to my hon. Friend at the beginning. If he had explained the precise target that he was after, I could have been more helpful, perhaps in advance of tonight's debate, about ways of dealing with the problems of his constituents.
	What I want to ensure for the future is that the regulator—in the case of ICSTIS, the delegated regulator, which effectively has authority devolved to it from Ofcom—the Government and the industry can address the issues in such a way as to deal much faster with any scam that appears. We want to be able to seize it, get a grip on it and prevent it from happening. I think that everyone involved would acknowledge that it took some time for people to realise just how costly the scam could be for customers and some time to get up to speed in responding to it. That, however, has now been achieved and I would remind my hon. Friend and the House that—
	The motion having been made after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order
	Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes to Eleven o'clock.